An easy way to test paint samples on your walls

I've been trying to decide on paint colors for various rooms in our house for awhile now. There are paint swatches all over my house, it's ridiculous. I recently learned a new trick from a designer that I wanted to share, and wish I had thought of from the get go.

To avoid the not so attractive paint blocks all over your walls, just paint the color sample on posterboard. Yes, go out and buy a sheet of posterboard that we used for projects back in school (it felt kind of funny to buy a few sheets, I had flashbacks of the millions of times I used them back in the day). Cut the posterboard in half, unless you want a really large sample. Then use painters tape (I used the green frog paint tape I had on hand), and tape it down to a table or counter, shiny side down, so you paint on the matte side. Leave an inch or so border on the posterboard when you tape. Paint the posterboard, then leave it taped down until the paint dries. Slowly peel off the green tape from all sides, and you've got a great large color block of your sample! Use the painters tape to tape it on the wall in the room you want to paint.








What's great is that you can move the posterboard around to different walls in the room to see the color in different lighting. And if you're like me and now have two shoe boxes full of different colors, be sure to write the paint color on the posterboard so you won't have to guess what it is later!!

I think I'm going to finally paint the office this weekend - pics to come next week! --DS