Matching real-life interior paint colors for use in Google Sketchup

Painting the interior of a house can not only be a physical hassle, but a monetary and mental nuisance as well. Coordinating colors throughout a home can be very hard to visualize and if done improperly can cost you quite a bit of money in the end. I have been using Google Sketchup recently to help my Wife and I remodel our house however I wanted the paint colors to match as best as possible. In order to do so, I came up with the following solution.

Step 1 Prep

1. Make sure you have the latest version of Google Sketchup installed.
2. You will also need some sort of paint program. MS paint might work for this, but why would you? For the examples below I will be using The Gimp.
3. You may also wish to head down to your local home improvement store and grab some paint samples that you like to start with. We will be using “Behr’s Virtual Color Center” so this may only work for Behr colors however I have noticed many colors with the same names from different manufactures.

Comments

[mwarren_us]

Programs like Pixeur or Color Mania (http://www.instantfundas.com/2010/02/5-best-screen-color-pickers-for-windows.html ) can save a couple of steps by allowing you to mouse over any screen pixel and directly read its RGB color.