With so many paint colours on offer and so few rooms to transform, selecting the perfect shades for your home can seem like an impossible task. Whether it’s finding the ideal neutral colour or deciding just exactly , choosing paint for a room is often difficult –

In fact, for Tash Bradley, Director of Interior Design at Lick Paint, helping people find the right paint shade for them is part of her daily job. Over the years, Tash has seen countless people overcome ‘colour paralysis’ and turn their properties into the homes of their dreams. Speaking to the , she shares five of her top tips when it comes to paint selection…

Prior to even thinking about colour, it’s important to carefully think about the room that you’re about to paint. “The thing that you need to work out first is which room you are decorating. Think about that room and think about what you use that room for. You have to ask yourself what the purpose of the room is and what time of day you’re mainly in the room,” explains Tash. “If you’re going to be in there more during the night than the day, when you’re testing colour you need to look at it under artificial light rather than just during the day in bright light.”

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While wall colours can easily be changed, swapping out other influential factors such as carpets are less easy. In turn, Tash emphasises the importance of making a note of what parts of a room will be staying after the painting has taken place.

“The other thing that I really want people to think about because they don’t, is what’s staying? What are you not changing? Is your floor staying? Is the sofa staying? Is the bed staying?,” she says. “We never see colour in isolation. When you paint a wall, it can look so different depending on the colour flooring you have, so you have to take into account all the things that are staying as well.”

Besides making rooms look pleasing, . From making us more alert to helping us wind down, paint colours can help bring certain vibes to different rooms. “Do you want to feel cosy and you’d like to go in there and relax, or are you someone that needs a bit of energy and you want it to be fresh and light?,” asks Tash.

“When I’m in a consultation, people will often say that they don't know what they want, but they do know they want it to be fresh, light and airy. In that case, blues and greens will achieve that whereas rich terracotta reds won’t.”

Although you may not know what exact colour you want in a room, chances are you know what colours you don’t want to see. By carefully looking into what colours you’d like to avoid, you might learn some more about those that you’d like to see more of.

“It’s so funny, people weirdly know what they don’t like more than what they do like. I always ask them what they don't like and why and they’ll explain that it reminds them of something from when they were growing up or that they don’t like dark environments for a certain reason. That's always a good way to whittle out some colours,” she says.

Finally, if you still have no idea where to start, consider taking a rummage through your wardrobe to see what kind of colours you tend to gravitate towards. “Subconsciously you are more confident choosing colour when you wear it, because when you decorate it's quite a big commitment and you don’t want to be doing that every week,” says Tash.

“If you go into someone’s wardrobe, it’s so interesting because you can see whether they have loads of neutrals and stick to bright accessories, or if they have lots of patterns and bold colours. If it’s the latter, they are more likely to bring bolder colours into their home. I always think that's quite a good place to go to.”

She adds: “Once you've almost gone through answering these questions, you’re only left with a couple of colours. It’s amazing because by that point you’ve almost removed colour paralysis just by knowing that it’s a room that you’ll spend lots of time in during the day, you like light colours, have a natural wood floor and green sofa.”

Tash’s book Master The Art Of Colour: Practical Advice from the Room Renovations Expert will be released on April 10. Follow her on Instagram at @tash_lickcolour

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