What To Do When You've Chosen The Wrong Paint Colour (2024)

We’ve all been there.You bought a can of (possibly very expensive) paint, slapped it on the wall and within seconds of the first stroke of your paintbrush, you know that the colour you thought would be perfect is all wrong.

You keep going back to the room hoping that the colour is better than you remember it to be, even though you only saw it a couple of minutes ago.

You hope that it’ll dry differently. You hope that somehow the colour will miraculously change and you try to convince yourself that it will work, even though you know in your heart that it really won’t.

Sound familiar?

Choosing the right colour for your space can be difficult and there are a surprising amount of things to take into consideration when choosing a paint colour.

It’s not surprising that we all end up picking a colour that’s not the perfect shade we expect it to be sooner or later.

So, what can you do when you’ve chosen the wrong paint colour?

Your options are obviously limited but that’s no reason to despair just yet. There are a few things you can do to make the paint work for you.

Before you completely discount the paint it’s a good idea to make sure that the colour is really as wrong as you think.

It’s always important to give your paint a thorough stir before using it but it’s especially important if you’ve had your paint mixed in store as the colours sometimes settle and separate slightly.

Give it a really good stir – I’m talking a good 10 minutes or so – to make sure that all paint is thoroughly mixed. Then try painting another patch of the room to see if the colour has improved.

Also, don’t discount the colour after applying just one coat! Colours will change (sometimes dramatically) when you apply a second coat of paint!

Don’t forget that the paint colour will change when the paint dries, too. Paint will almost always dry slightly lighter than when you first apply it.

Obviously, the easiest choice is to just stick with the colour and suck it up.

Just because the colour isn’t what you imagined doesn’t mean that it won’t still look good once you’ve finished painting.

And, you’ll probably get used to it over time, too.

Once you’ve added your furniture and accessories and have put the room back together again, it’ll probably look different and it might not be as bad as you think!

It’s still only paint, so there’s nothing stopping you from repainting it again in the future if you do decide that you still don’t like it.

Just because the colour doesn’t work in the room you’re about to paint, doesn’t mean that it won’t work somewhere else in your house.

Things like aspect, light conditions, features, flooring and even the texture of your walls can all make a big difference in the way that painted walls look.

Don’t completely discount the paint colour just yet – it may be the perfect colour for somewhere else in your home!

It’s slightly risky, but if you really hate the colour that much, you probably don’t have much to lose by trying to adjust it slightly.

A bit of colour theory knowledge goes a long way here and knowing what colours you can add to balance out and slightly adjust the tone of your paint is really helpful.

Just be sure to add teeny tiny amounts of colour when you’re adjusting your paint colour. It’s amazing just how much a minuscule amount of paint can already change the colour of a whole large pot of paint!

If you know that you’ll never use the paint you might as well get rid of it now.

Paint is something that you can easily sell or, even better, donate. There are paint donation places like Community Repaint that will happily take it off your hands and redistribute it at an affordable cost!

Just because you don’t love the colour doesn’t mean that someone else won’t and at least you’re helping someone through your mistake!

Now, there’s a reason that I’m telling you all of this. It’s because we bought a tonne of paint to finish our guest bedroom only to find that we hated the colour!

Given that we had more than our fair share of mishaps while giving this room a makeover, choosing the wrong colour really didn’t make me feel any more motivated to get this room finished.

If you follow us on Instagram (you totally should be, of course!), you’ll already know that we didn’t end up using the paint in the guest bedroom which is now so close to being completed that I could burst!

We’ll be sharing the finished guest bedroom in a week or so but if you pop back later this week you can see what we ended up doing with the 20l! of paint that we accidentally bought!

Do you find it difficult to choose the right paint colour? Have you ever chosen a paint colour that you ended up not liking? What’s your favourite colour to paint yourwalls?

If you found this post helpful, you will love these ones, too!