What to Decide Before You Open a Paint Fan Deck
Paint fan decks are useful tools, but they’re also very good at sending people into a spiral if you open them too soon. (cue tears and stress)
They should confirm a decision, not make it for you.
Before you flip through hundreds of paint colours and start second-guessing yourself, there are a few simple decisions that will make choosing paint so much easier. You don’t need to know the exact colour yet, just this.
1. What’s staying (and what’s not)
Before you look at paint, look at what already exists in your home.
Things like:
flooring
tiles
benchtops
cabinetry
brick or stone
These finishes all have undertones, and they aren’t as flexible as paint colours, so making a catalogue of undertones present in your home will help you decide which paint colours will suit your interior best. If something is staying, your wall colour needs to work with it, not fight it. This one step alone can eliminate dozens (sometimes hundreds) of colours that were never going to work anyway.
→ Helpful tip: If you’re unsure how to read undertones in fixed finishes, this is something I walk through step-by-step in my Blueprint.
2. Your light (not the ideal light)
Paint doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it exists in your light. Before choosing colours, think about:
how much natural light your space actually gets;
whether it’s warm or cool light;
where you rely heavily on artificial lighting;
A colour that looks soft and warm in a bright showroom can look flat or cold in a darker home. This isn’t a failure, it’s just reality.
→ Helpful tip: Always choose colours based on how they’ll behave in your home, not how they look online or in-store.
3. The feeling you want (not the colour you like)
This is a big one! Instead of starting with “I like this colour”, start by deciding what feelings you want the space to show such as calm, warm, light, grounded, cosy, and fresh.
When you start with a feeling, you naturally narrow your options to colours that support that mood, rather than colours you love in isolation but struggle to live with.
→ Helpful tip: If it helps, finish this sentence: I want my home to feel ______, not ______.
4. Are you choosing for one room or your whole home?
This changes everything. If you’re choosing paint for:
a single room → you can usually go a little bolder;
multiple rooms → flow matters more than impact.
A colour that looks great in one room doesn’t always work when you see it repeatedly throughout the house. Deciding this upfront saves you from repainting later.
→ Helpful tip: Whole-house colour palettes take this guesswork out entirely by mapping where and how each colour works best.
5. How much contrast you’re comfortable with
Be honest here. Do you prefer:
soft transitions between spaces?
or defined contrast and visual drama?
Higher contrast looks striking, but it’s also less forgiving and more noticeable in everyday life. Lower contrast tends to feel calmer, more timeless, and easier to live with long-term.
→ Gentle reminder: Contrast always looks stronger on walls than it does on a paint fan deck.
Before you open that fan deck…
You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need a few clear starting points.
Once those are in place, a paint fan deck becomes a helpful confirmation tool, not an overwhelming decision-maker.
→ If you want help narrowing your choices without the stress:
Explore my whole-house colour palettes for done-for-you combinations;
Or start with my free colour guide if you’re still in the early stages.
What if you didn’t have to keep fixing colour mistakes one by one? The Confident Home Colour Blueprint gives you a clear system for planning your colours properly from the start.
Choosing paint doesn’t have to be hard; it just needs the right order.
Thank you for reading, and happy decorating!
Manon xx