Choosing a paint color may seem like a simple enough task – that is until you start doing it. People’s opinions of color are subjective. Color can look different in the interior of your church compared to the store.
Even the quality of light can make an impact on how the color appears to your congregation. Your style of worship needs to be taken into account, along with the existing architecture.
Read on to learn our foolproof process for how to find the best paint color for your church interior!
1. Form Your Committee
You’re probably not the only one who’s making this decision, but it’s not recommended to get your entire church involved. There will be too many differing opinions to eliminate! When this happens, you’ll most likely opt for the safest color – beige.
While beige isn’t a bad color for your church, it may not be the optimal one. With this in mind, create a small group or subcommittee of three or four qualified people to make the final decision. Determine each stakeholder’s decision making style.
A small group makes it easier to interact with the architect or interior designer. Your subcommittee can bounce ideas off of them and learn how colors impact the church’s design.
2. Examine the Church Interior
Spend some time examining the interior of your church. Take into account architectural structures and fixed features, such as tile work, brick, or wood trim. You’ll also want to take note of window treatments and window trim. Note how the light changes throughout the day.
For instance, if you have stained glass windows on the eastern side of your church, maybe you’ll notice that the interior appears warmer or cooler in the morning.
Lastly, take in the church’s design: is it long and rectangular, or wide and square? In these cases, perhaps a darker shade on the shorter walls and a lighter shade on the longer walls will make your church appear larger.
As you notice these features, take photos of them so that you can reference them when you shop for paint colors.
3. Paint Shopping
Once you have your reference photos, head to the paint store and request samples in different shades. Create color palettes that are composed of different colors, such as light blues, greens, yellows, and cream.
Paint these colored swatches onto the walls and ceiling of your church that’s several brush widths big. This is because paint colors often look different on walls compared to their sample cards. With your committee, plan to view these swatches at various times of the day and see which colors people gravitate to the most.
4. Psychology of Colors
To help you narrow down your selection, there’s also the psychology of color to take into account – different colors produce different atmospheres and moods depending on their shades and tones.
Red
This stands for passion, love, energy, strength, and power. As the most intense color, used as an accent color it’s capable of increasing the room’s energy.
Orange
Orange represents joy, sunshine, enthusiasm, happiness, creativity, encouragement, and success. Gold, a variation of orange, represents wisdom and wealth. Bright orange adds elements of warmth and adventure, but like red it can become overpowering if it’s used as the main color.
Yellow
Yellow stands for joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. Bright yellow can evoke optimistic feelings. Although yellow is generally an uplifting color, you’ll need to make sure to choose the right shade of yellow. For instance, a dull yellow can give the opposite effect: feelings of sickness and decay.
Green
This is the color of nature. It brings feelings of peace and calm to an interior. It also symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. With these calming effects, people will feel safe in interior painted a light green.
Blue
Blue is one of the most popular colors in the United States. It’s known to slow down the metabolism and produces a calming effect, much like green. It represents trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, faith, truth, and heaven.
It’s known to bring down blood pressures and slow heart rates, benefiting both the mind and body. However, blues in rooms that don’t get much natural sunlight can make the space feel cold.
Purple
Dark purple is a dramatic color that’s associated with luxury, sophistication, and creativity. Light purple, on the other hand, adds a peaceful quality to a room, much like green and blue.
5. Questions to Ask
With the psychology of colors in mind, you can narrow down your selection by asking yourself what mood you want to evoke in your church. If your church is high energy, maybe you’ll want more yellows and oranges to evoke the same mood.
If your congregation is quiet and reflective, tranquil colors such as light greens, blues, or purples paired with creams are a better choice.
Ask yourself:
- What feelings do I want to evoke?
- What is the worship style of my congregation?
- How much natural light fills the room, and what is the quality of light?
- Do I want to use warm accents or cool accents?
Colors to Heighten Worship
There is a near limitless amount of paint colors you can choose for your church interior. However, taking into account your worship style, the psychology of color, and the permanent architectural features of your church, finding a color that suits your congregation will be easier.
You want to find and choose colors that will match your church’s current aesthetics and energy level.
Ready to begin your painting project? Contact us today for a free estimate!