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It’s tough picking colors – there are a lot of choices, considerations and a heavy burden if you pick the wrong color; you might be stuck with it. I’ll never forget years ago, before I met Kieron who would have cautioned me against it, I chose a color called “adobe” for my NYC apartment hoping to spark a sense of peace and tranquility in the city. Instead the color manifested as a horrid cross between Pepto Bismol and the color of one’s intestines in a colonoscopy. There was no money to change it and no amount of art on the walls could calm it. Lesson learned: the inspiration of a name and how the color actually comes to life in your room or on your house can be vastly different.

I think this is why so many of us inevitably stick with beige or white, as it feels safe. But I’ve been lucky enough to marry a painter and have a love for interior design, though I am no expert. And San Francisco is a city full of color from all our parks and wildlife to our iconic Victorians; it’s what makes our city so beautiful. Color brightens up a foggy day. It’s a flash of personality. It’s vibrant and full of life on a sunny day. And overall, color sparks joy for both the homemakers and those who benefit in the neighborhood.

But choosing the right colors for your home is both a fun adventure and terrifying. I know Kieron has witnessed people over the years paralyzed by the choice, but there are ways to make it a fun and safe expedition. Sherwin-Williams has a number of different tools and services to help off-set the trepidation. One can request an online video call with a color consultant, use an app on your phone or use a web based tool. I decided to try the web based tool to pick colors for a small building we rent out that needed an update. The Paint Color Visualizer isn’t a perfect tool, but it helps with the mental gymnastics of placing your building on the street with your neighbors buildings and finding colors for your property that help highlight the best assets.

So how does the wife of a painting contractor pick colors?

Step 1: What’s the street like?

Is there a type or types of buildings like yours? What color palettes are used? Are there other aspects of your street that are interesting?

In the case of our property, it’s on a charming little street in SOMA, a bit protected from some of the more stressful aspects of the city. It’s a mix of red brick, stucco, Victorians, old carriage houses and warehouses. There is a lot of greenery and sunshine and it’s a mix of businesses and residential.

Kieron and I noticed a building similar to ours and we liked how they leaned into the structural elements of the building, and while the colors were a bit dark for us, it gave us a spark of confidence to do something a little different:

Step 2: What’s your place like?

What stands out about your building? Are there any interesting elements to it?

When we acquired the building it was this yellowy beige and white with dark grey doors and window trim. We liked the grey, but the other colors were a bit blah, especially with our neighbors being very similar in tone and yet not the same colors. We also liked the red of our tile roof, and the red brick of some of the other buildings on our street. [PHOTO COMING]

Step 3: What do your neighbors look like?

How can your colors complement (or at the very least not clash with) your neighbors?

We couldn’t go all out crazy with our color choice, because this is a commercial rental property. We needed to stay somewhat neutral and clean, but we wanted aspects of the building to pop and feel distinct from the buildings next to us.

Step 4: Build potential palettes

This is when we started to lean on Sherwin-Williams which happens to be walking distance from our home. In our mind were flavors of red tile and red brick, maintaining the dark grey. But we  wanted to build in a new accent color to off-set the red and we needed a base color to replace the dull white.

Replacing the dull white was the easiest, I found a similar color to the existing doors (SW 7615

Sea Serpent) and then found the lightest relative to that color (SW 6253 Olympus White). But while The Color Visualizer has a cool way of navigating the different color spectrums, it really can’t do the colors justice because every monitor is different and I don’t know how much attention Sherwin-Williams may or may not have given to precisely replicating the colo. My advice is go into the shop and choose your initial colors this way.

The Color Visualizer:

Step 5: Finding the right balance

This is the most exciting and terrifying stage. The Color Visualizer really helped narrow down which types of colors and where to place them on the building for maximum impact by ‘painting a photo’ of the building. Again the colors are not a perfect match but the tool helps to conceptualize what the building could look like.

Step 6: Paint out Samples

We chose one Teal and three reds and Kieron made the samples for our job just as he does for any job McCartney Painting does. The color is always different from the chips. Then we brought the colors down to the building and saw how the light and shadows changed the color. We finalized our choice, made peace with it, bought the paint and made it a reality.

So, while Sherwin-Williams’s digital tool isn’t the whole process of our choosing colors, it did help us with those mental gymnastics of seeing how the colors play off each other, what accents can be highlighted and how the building might distinguish itself from the neighbors while still feeling very much of the neighborhood.

Final Sherwin-Williams Colors:

• SW-6253 Olympus White
• SW-6769 Maxi Teal
• SW-7615 Sea Serpent
• SW-6615 Peppery