When it comes to choosing paint colors, most painters will simply hand their customer a fan deck. They don’t want to be involved in the process of choosing color because they don’t want to be blamed if the end result wasn’t what the customer envisioned.
I get that. However, I think they are forgetting a very important point.
Customers are looking at the color on the walls.
I tell customers all the time “no matter how good of a job we do painting your home, if you don’t love the colors you choose, you are not going to be 100% happy with the job done.”
I do all the professional color consultations for Warline Painting. Years of working with color and seeing what worked and what didn’t work has given me the experience to really help our customers choose the right colors. Last year I added to that experience by becoming a certified True Color Expert under the direction of color and undertone expert, Maria Killam. She has an ebook on her website that I highly recommend for any painter or designer to help learn how to distinguish undertones.
I also have a secret tool for helping customers choose the perfect paint colors. Large samples. They are 11 X 14 poster boards painted with the top colors I recommend most often.
I can’t tell you how many times a customer has said “that’s not the same color as on the chip” followed by “wow – that’s really surprising” when I held the paint chip over my larger sample to show them they were in fact the same color. The reason? You can’t judge a color based on a two inch paint chip.
If you have been sampling colors for your customers by painting sample patches on walls, I promise these samples will make your life much easier.
They are reusable; they can be moved from room to room and they can be compared to other colors. As a painter its not difficult to build up an inventory of these samples as you work on new jobs. I just simply roll off a couple of samples whenever I open a new can of a new color.
Still not convinced that you want to talk color with your customer?
How about working with a local professional color consultant and start making samples for them? Every designer that has seen my large samples salivates over them and immediately wants to know if they can get their own set. It’s why I always make doubles of my samples so I can give them to designers I work with. If you label them with the color code, name, paint brand, your company name and website – you have just created some free marketing for yourself. When that desginer or color consultant is asked to recommend a painter, its pretty likely that you are going to be at the top of the list.
Not every painter is going to offer color advice to their customers. But if you are interested in adding value to your services, standing apart from the competition and improving customer satisfaction, helping with color choice is a great place to start.