Choosing Colors. An Expert Choice of the Best Colors to Use in Your Home

Customer Reviews

Look no further!

2008-07-09
This is by far the best color reference book I have ever used. I am a residential design professional and there is a palette for everyone on your list in this book. It even provides you with the American paint suppliers and paint names/reference numbers. The brief histories are a plus as well. It is simply the fastest way to help yourself with color palettes for all architectural styles from antiquity to the present.

Overly complex to use

2008-05-09
Save your money and buy the Color Bible. While this does have some historical references, unless you are doing a period home, do you care? I re-read the "how to use this book" 5 times. Couldn't find the numeric references to the palettes ("on palette 17.....etc"). Asked a few friends to help cause I was obviously missing something.

Not worth the work. Buy a color wheel and a painters fan deck instead.

Most useful book on color palettes I could find

2008-02-11
I bought this book while trying to plan a color palette for our new house. I've always liked houses with some color on the walls and different colors in different rooms. The challenge is finding colors that match the furnishings of each room and yet still coordinate with the other room colors.

The book provides broader and more versatile palettes than I was able to find in any other book. Better yet, it provided some scattered advice about what colors to use in particular situations (i.e. exterior vs. interior, main color vs. accent, cloudy climate vs. sunny climate). It also offered advice about how to put together color combinations that work. For example, I found it's advice about the surprising utility of purple colors in bringing a complex palette together was quite useful.

I would have liked to have found a book that offered more systematic advice or a palette that was precisely what I needed, but using the principles and some of the examples in this book I was able to put a household palette together that I am reasonably pleased with.

A top pick for any lending library strong in home and garden guides.

2007-12-02
Kevin McCloud is an authority on residential architecture and design, and his personal choice of the best colors to use in every type of home makes choosing a snap in CHOOSING COLORS, which includes over 700 color swatches and tips for home decor ranging from historical to modern. From early period colors to modern earth tones and mixes, there are plenty of outstanding examples perfect for selecting the right color shade and combination, making this a top pick for any lending library strong in home and garden guides.

Great help for anyone choosing paint colors

2007-08-17
This was exactly the book I was hoping it would be. It truly helps you choose colors from the popular brands of paint available. I was most interested in colors for a room with only a northern exposure. Every color I tried seemed to turn green on the walls. This book was extremely helpful in this regard. The only reason I gave it only 4 stars instead of 5 is the same reason others have commented on. The paint colors used in palette 28 and 29 were omitted from the reference guide in the rear of the book. It covers blue which is most people's favorite color so the omission is significant. Fortunately, for me, blue is my least favorite color.

good book

2006-11-06

Any hardware store has more than enough paint chips to utterly confuse both homeowners and designers. Choosing Colors makes choosing just the right colors simple and rewarding. Internationally acclaimed designer Kevin McCloud has created an invaluable sourcebook packed with his personal tips and ideas on using more than 1,000 color chips presented in over 80 palettes. Each palette is a blueprint for a decorative plan, and the stunning full-color photos show those remarkable plans in action. For greatest color accuracy, the entire book is printed in six colors rather than the usual four. All swatches are identified with manufacturers’ numbers, and a complete list of suppliers rounds out this beautiful, indispensable reference book.

Excellent color resource

2006-05-18
This book is a great resource for choosing colors - especially if you have difficulty choosing and putting colors together. It provides information as well as inspiration. The pictures are beautiful.

Won't help

2006-03-25
Even thou I'm a professional Interior Decorator, this book doesn't give me much info I don't already know, also the colour samples are missing the manufacturer names and numbers to be found in stores. Yet the credits do mention which companies were used.

Everyday home decorator won't find any help from this one.

Two stars for the pretty pictures.

This one did not work for me.

2006-02-05
I think this book might be helpful for the professional interior decorator. It was just not what I was looking for in a color book. Each section generally starts with a page or two of colors squares, i.e yellow or yellow-orange. It then describes the color (A very 1950's yellow, warm and dense. Look at it with only the colors below and the three to the left). These pages are then followed with photos of rooms using some of the colors. The entire book is arranged this way. The red rooms are almost completely red (page 5-6) and very few of the rooms were my particular taste or style. Some of the color palettes that were used together seemed more jarring than coordinated, except when the author got to the more sedate, calmer colors (pg, 32, 38).

I prefer the BH&G - Color Schemes book which has a more realistic and useable color palette and presents them in beautifully decorated rooms. Again, this one might be more useful to the professional decorator, but for me it was too much text and history.

great source on understanding color

2005-12-01
This book really tought me how to look at colors and define them easier in terms of what is was I was looking for. The book also goes in detail on color history and you can apply color in your decorating. Pretty good color swatches accuracy but still not bullet proof in terms of what you'll achieve in your environment. I ended trying our a few colors samples which also depend on who mixes your paint. Do try out any paint first!