Wenberg Color Design

Painting your house this summer? Here are 3 reasons I don’t recommend painting a ‘tester’ directly on the house as the person in this photo did:

1. You aren’t seeing enough of the color and you’re only seeing it in one place on the house.

2. How we see color is altered by the colors around it and what you see here is not a true representation of what the color will really look like on the house.

3. When you paint directly over an existing color the old color can shadow through and alter the color you are evaluating.

I recommend painting 2 coats of your ‘tester’ color directly on an inexpensive white poster board but don’t paint all the way to the edges, leave an inch or more border of white. You can now move the board around and test it on all sides of the house, in both sun and shadow. Because of the white border the color will be seen accurately and not altered by the adjacent colors. I provide large color samples to my clients so they needn’t purchase paint to test colors but many painting contractors require their clients to approve a sample painted directly on the house before they begin painting, so it’s important to know how to do it properly. Happy painting!