TIPS & TRICKS

Choosing the right paint color for your home can feel overwhelming. Many homeowners in Moncton, Riverview, and Dieppe run into the same problem—you pick a color expecting one result, only to see something completely different once it’s on the wall.

That “perfect gray” suddenly looks blue, green, or even purple.

Hi, I’m Remi Boudreau, Licensed Painter, Color Consultant, and owner of Expressions Painting. In this guide, I’m going to walk you through the exact 3-step process we use with our clients to make sure their vision becomes reality. 

Step 1: Start with a Fan Deck to Compare Undertones

The first step in choosing the right paint color is using a fan deck.

A fan deck allows you to see multiple shades of a color side by side. This is incredibly important because undertones are almost impossible to detect when looking at a single swatch.

For example:

• -Some grays have green undertones
• Others lean purple or blue
• Some shift toward beige (greige)

When you compare them togethe...

"Everywhere you see that YELLOW... 

I want that gone." 

I remember in the early 2000s, every job seemed to have a color with some yellow or gold undertones for the main color. This particular one from Sherwin Williams called Blonde SW6128 was quite popular

Basically, it seemed like everywhere you looked, there was this yellow goldish beige color serving as the main tapestry for most houses. We used to call it the builder's beige since at the time every new house was getting painted with a color along this line.

To go with those colors, we would often see burnt oranges or reds often with sage greens.

Kind of like this (see image)

But that trend changed in 2011...

I remember this so vividly because it's almost as if from one year to the next, everything changed.

From then on out, it seemed like every time I'd walk into a client's house to give an estimate, one of the main things they would say is this  "everywhere you see that yellow, I want that gone".

Seems like people had had...

With 2025 now behind us, I thought I'd take a moment to share with you which colors we've actually ended up applying most in our client's home this past year.

Number one: Agreeable Gray SW7029 (Sherwin Williams)

This is a wonderful, gray/beige color and depending on the environment you put this color in, it will lean more towards the gray or towards the beige, especially depending on the lighting. In a lot of cases, this is a color we put in homes where the floors might have a bit of a goldish or amber undertone to it (a bit of yellow or orange tint in the wood color).That tends to remove a bit of the attention from the floor and makes this gray/beige color turn a little bit more on the gray side during the day... and, a bit more on the beige side come evening since the light tends to have a bit of more of the yellow hue in the evening. So it's a nice color, versatile, tends to tie in together all sorts of different wood colors. If you have different color wood like more on the red o...

Choosing colors with Grey Undertones will typically give you the following 2 benefits:

• COVER Better
• PERFORM Better (More washable, Better Adhesion, etc)

But there's another KEY BENEFIT you get for choosing colors with some sort of Grey Undertone which is what I discuss in this week's Tips & Tricks Video. 

There's a lot of items that will typically get added on the TO-DO LIST when buying a new house.

And if PAINTING finds itself on that list, here are 3 KEY BENEFITS you'll experience by making sure to check it off the list the moment you buy a new house.

Why is GREY sooooo popular these days?

Why do we get tired of certain colors after a while?

What's the secret to combining colors that work well together?

These questions, and many more, are answered in this week's video...

Click on the links below to watch the first two videos in this 3 Part Series

PART 1: What Exactly Is Color?

Part 2: Here's How We Perceive & Interpret Color Frequencies

Remember this famous illusion?

Some people were seeing the dress WHITE & GOLD... while others were seeing it BLUE & BROWN.

That's a pretty BIG difference, wouldn't you agree?

Well turns out, the same thing that made this illusion possible is also creating illusions in your life... every... single... day.

Whether you're looking at colors on a wall or in your surroundings... OR... interpreting situations & events in your life.

To watch the first video in this series, CLICK HERE.

What happens to COLOR when you turn off the lights?

Is that RED apple still red if it's in a pitch black room?

Was it even RED to begin with?

To answer those questions, we'll need to first go to the source and answer this question: what exactly is color?

And the short answer is - FREQUENCY!

Those 2 paint swatches are the SAME... but somehow they appear DIFFERENT.

So which one is CORRECT?

If you've ever picked a color only to have it turn out different than you expected, this little trick would probably have made a world of differentce... 

Is it possible to "Change the Colors" in your home simply by changing light bulbs?

The answer is, ABSOLUTELY!

For color to appear, it requires LIGHT. 

NO LIGHT = NO COLOR

But light can have different COLOR TEMPERATURES based on the time of day (light coming from the sun)... or the type of light bulbs we choose (light generated from inside our home).

Be sure to watch this weeks video for a clear example on how different color can appear in different lighting environments.