05/30/2025
What Contractors Don’t Want You to Know: The Educated Homeowner Series
An educated homeowner cannot easily be fooled. – Michael Cassidy-Master house painter, carpenter and repairs of all kinds
🚨 Super Simple Tip #10: Choose Paint Colors the Right Way with Color Isolation! 🚨Homeowners, don’t fall for the trap of picking paint colors from tiny samples or chips! The small dot on a paint can lid or an 8 oz sample from a big box store misleads you—it’s not the true color on your walls. Worse, fan decks and chip walls in stores place colors side by side, altering each other’s hues due to juxtaposition and simultaneous contrast, making it nearly impossible to choose accurately. Designers and decorators trained at places like the Savannah School of Art learn this but often ignore it, laying out books and strips the wrong way. A hundred years ago, colors were hung and painted individually, separated to avoid hue distortion—people knew better! My Sigma color isolation system, honed over decades as a color expert for historical and popular U.S. colors, uses a fun, card-game-like method: I flip large painted boards one at a time, like a deck of cards, showing only one color to keep your visual cortex clear. You eliminate colors you don’t like in under 10 minutes for the perfect pick!
Check out these three images:1️⃣ A paint can with a tiny color dot on the lid—too small to trust.2️⃣ An 8 oz sample from a big box store—misleading for your final choice.3️⃣ A fan deck of printed chips, where side-by-side colors distort each other. 4️⃣ Two of my 15x20-inch PVC plastic boards used for accurate color sampling. Struggling to pick the right color? Email [email protected] for expert advice! Test colors on large boards, one at a time, to avoid costly mistakes. 📢 Pass this on! Share with your neighbors to save them from color regrets. Stay tuned for more in the Educated Homeowner Series.
These tips inspired me to create the Aqua Prevent system: aquaprevent.com/water-prevention. Visit my business page for info or [email protected] for help with colors, repairs or free advice.
