Do your homework before making big changes
By: Beverly Allen - April 16th, 2007
For the winter-weary homeowner, spring’s vivid palette can be an inspiration to bring new colour to both the interior and exterior of the house. But visualizing how a particular shade of paint or renovation and building materials is too often a gamble that the homeowner loses.
A new software package called HomeWorks makes it easier to decide if hot pink siding with purple trim is really a look you can live with. Designed and sold by Home Hardware stores across Canada, the package is aimed at both homeowners and contractors, and lets users alter digital images to see how construction and design products will look before work begins.
Using uploaded photos of their own home, or one of several stock photos included in the package, the user can sample more than 2,500 Home Hardware products, ranging from paint, flooring, siding, windows to doors and hardware. A list of materials being considered can then be taken to a Home Building Centre, and roughly priced out to form the base of a project budget. This might make the program a particularly worthwhile purchase for homeowners who are thinking of selling, as it could help price the cost of upgrades that might enhance curb appeal.
HomeWorks also contains links to sites with useful information, such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Canadian Home Builders’ Association.
Incidentally, HomeWorks also links to LoveMyPlace.com!
Home Works is available at Home Hardware and Home Building Centres stores for about $25. It comes with a $25 gift card, which the homeowner can used on a minimum purchase of $450 on select purchases at Home stores.
Benjamin Moore has a similar program called the Personal Colour Viewer, available online at www.benjaminmoore.ca There, homeowners can play around with paint colours, again using digital pictures of their own homes or stock pictures provided. Set colour schemes are suggested, but the user can experiment with the full Benjamin Moore palette, and even define certain areas of the room—the wall behind a bed, for example—and colour block it in complimentary or contrasting colour. This program is a lot of fun to use, and could be especially helpful if you’ve got that “I want to change the colour of the living room, but have no ideas” problem.
While the Personal Colour Viewer is a great way to get a feel for colours, just remember that you should never buy paint based solely on how the colour looks on the screen. Instead, narrow your choices, and get samples of the colours that most appeal to you. Paint a small area of the room, and then check the room at different times for a day or two. See how the colour looks, as the light changes throughout the day before making a final decision.
One way to add new colour to a room without committing to full-scale change is with an LED light pad covered with the same kind of tinted gel that film lighting specialists use to give starlets that other-worldly glow.
The LitePad by Rosco holds LED lights in a slim, flat acrylic panel that comes in a variety of sizes. Because it’s LED, it uses very little power and stays cool, making it a good choice for accent lighting under kitchen cupboards. It can also be used to great effect as a backlight behind a photo or other artwork, and looks pretty placed beneath a vase with fresh spring flowers.
The panels can be screwed directly into the wall or fixed with Velcro tape. Prices start at about $50 for a 3 x 3-inch pad. For information about availability, contact Rosco Canada at 905-475-1400 or visit www.roscocanada.com.
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