Good Things Come to Those Who Paint

To paint or not to paint, that is the question:
’tis nobler in the home to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous colours,
Or to take up a paintbrush against a sea of trouble…

There’s something disheartening for a colour lover when you walk down your average street to be greeted by (what seems to be) endless rows of beige and grey siding and stucco. The architects may have had incredible gifts and accomplishments, like the ability to calculate the day of the week for any date in history, but unfortunately most possessed the design acumen of a lettuce.

Long gone are the days where every house was unique in its construction, colour and architecture; with the rise of cookie-cutter homes making our streets look increasingly identical, fuliginous and boring.

There’s no denying the influence color has on our purchases, big and small. From cereal boxes to cars, color psychology drives marketing all over the world. Buying a house is certainly no exception.

Only 10% of people can see beyond what they see as they walk into a property. That means that anything taste-specific is difficult for buyers to overlook when choosing their dream home. Although I distrust this statistic, because I learned it from a placemat.

That’s not to say that you can’t save the day by bringing in some personality with colour. It just has to be the right one.

When sellers ask what is the “Best Bang for Their Buck” in preparing their home for sale…my answer is always paint.

Colour is not just paint. The right colour sells and makes a huge difference to the length of time a house is on the market and the price it sells for. There have been a myriad of times over the last decade and a half, where I had unfurnished houses sell within days just by having them repainted.