Start with the home you have

Most color advice begins with a color. This course begins with your home: what stays, what can change, what you can spend, and one first project small enough to finish.

1. What a color plan is for Understand

A color plan is a set of decisions about which color goes on which surface, in which rooms, and why. "Why" is the part that makes it a plan rather than a list of purchases. Before any decision can have a reason, you need to be able to say what the plan is for, and that sentence is almost never about a color.

Compare two ways of stating the same wish. "I want sage green walls" is a purchase. "I want the living room to feel settled in the evening, and I want the oak floor to look like a choice rather than something we are stuck with" is a goal. The second sentence can be checked: when you are standing in the room at nine at night with a sample board against the wall, you can ask whether the room feels settled and whether the floor looks chosen. The first sentence can only be checked by asking whether the walls are green, which you already know. Wanting a particular color is a perfectly good reason to consider it, and you can keep the wish; add a sentence about what it is for, so there is something to check it against.

So the first job of the plan is to write goals as sentences about the home and the people in it. Good goals name a room, a time of day or a use, and a feeling or a practical need. "The hallway should be easy to see your way along at night." "The kitchen and the living room should read as one house, not two." "The bedroom should be the calmest room, because it is the only room that is only ours." Some goals are Preference (calm, warm, bold); some are practical (visibility, wipeable surfaces, less glare); most households have a mix. All of them are legitimate, and all of them are yours to set. The course never tells you what to want.

Everything that follows in the course is assessed against these sentences. When Module 6 asks whether a palette is consistent with your brief, this is the brief it means. When Module 11 asks whether a decision is confirmed, one of the questions is whether it serves a goal you wrote here. Goals can change as observation teaches you, and the brief tool asks you to keep the old wording when you change it, because knowing what you used to want is part of knowing what you want now.

2. Constraints: money, permission, time, people, the building

A constraint is anything that limits what the plan can do. Beginners treat constraints as the sad part, the list of reasons the plan cannot be what the pictures show. The course treats them as the shape of the plan. A constraint written down stops being a worry and becomes a fact you can design with. Five kinds cover nearly everything.

Money. Decide, roughly, what you can spend on color this year: paint, textiles, bulbs and lamps, a rug, small furniture, samples. The number can be small. A plan with a two-hundred-dollar budget is a real plan; it simply makes different moves (Module 10 ranks moves by effect per dollar). Write the number down even if it embarrasses you, because a number you have not written down is easy to exceed quietly. Also write what the number does not cover (a new sofa, flooring, a kitchen), so that those things land in the right column of the sort.

Permission. A lease, a co-op board, a homeowners' association, a landlord's "light colors only," a partner's veto on anything dark, a parent's house you are living in. Permission is not only about paint: it covers hooks in the walls, changing a light fixture, removing a curtain rail, painting a built-in. Write what you know and mark what you do not. "Not sure whether the lease allows a repaint if I repaint it back" is a constraint with a to-do attached, and the to-do is to ask.

Time. Weekends only; a deadline (guests in March, a baby in June, a lease that ends); a long stretch with no deadline at all. Time shapes phasing. If you have a year, the plan can be tested slowly and bought in pieces; if you have a month, the plan should make one or two moves that do not depend on each other.

People. Who lives here, who decides, and who has needs the plan must serve: children, pets, someone who works from home in the room, someone with low vision who needs to see the edge of a step, someone who sees some colors differently, two adults who want different things. Household disagreement is a design problem, not a personality problem, and the course treats it that way in Modules 6 and 10. The brief tool has a line for each person, in their own words.

The building. Its age and style, its light (Module 4), its fixed materials (the next section), the shapes of its rooms and the way they connect. A 1970s split-level is not going to become a loft, and a one-bedroom rental with two west windows is not going to become a bright east-facing kitchen. This is not a limitation to mourn; it is the home you are designing for, and designing for it, rather than against it, is most of what makes a result look intentional.

3. The three-way sort: stays, can change, undecided

The central act of this module is a sort. Every surface and every belonging in the rooms in play goes into one of three columns.

Stays. It is not changing, for any reason: too expensive (the floor), not permitted (the walls in a rental), or simply loved (the burgundy sofa, the red rug). The reason does not matter to the sort; what matters is that the plan must work with this thing. Anything in this column that is large or visible is what the course calls a fixed element: floors, tile, counters, cabinets, trim, a big sofa, a rug, a fireplace, the window frames. Fixed elements are what Module 5 builds the palette around. Define them early, because every later decision is a comparison against them.

Can change. You have the permission, the means and the willingness to change it. Walls, if you can paint; cushions and curtains; a lampshade; bulbs; art; the small table you never liked. "Can change" is not "will change." It is a list of what the plan is allowed to touch, from which Module 10 chooses the few moves worth making.

Undecided. You genuinely do not know yet. Whether the sofa gets recovered depends on a quote you have not asked for. Whether the walls can be painted depends on an answer from the landlord. Whether the tile stays depends on how it looks beside the chips you will compare it with in Module 3. Undecided is a legitimate category, not a failure to decide: it is a column with a question attached and a date by which you expect an answer. Things leave it when you learn something, and they can leave it in either direction.

Two habits make the sort useful. First, when in doubt, it stays. Assuming something is fixed costs little; assuming it will change and building a palette around its absence costs a great deal if it turns out to stay. Second, sort belongings as carefully as surfaces. A floor is obviously fixed, but a sofa you are keeping for ten more years is just as fixed and often more colorful, and a rug you love is frequently the real anchor of a room. The sort is not about what is nailed down; it is about what the plan has to answer to.

4. Inspiration is not a shopping list

You almost certainly have images: a café with terracotta walls, a friend's dark blue study, a hotel bathroom, a scarf, a photograph of a room you have never been in. Keep them. Make a folder (a phone album, a drawer, a page in the notebook) and put every one in it, and beside each one write a word or two about what you liked: "the calm," "the dark door against the pale wall," "how the wood looked warm, not orange." The words matter more than the images, because the words are the goals and the images are only where you found them.

Then keep a second list, the shopping list, and leave it empty. Nothing goes on it until Module 9, where the only purchases are sample pots or peel-and-stick samples for the room you are testing, and Module 10, where purchases are ranked by effect per dollar and most of them wait. The separation is the discipline of the whole course in one habit: looking is free and should be generous; buying is expensive and should be late.

The reason is not thrift alone. An image shows a different room, with different light coming through different windows at a different hour, with a different floor under the wall and a different sheen on it. A paint color copied from that room may well not look the same in yours, because what you saw in the image was the color in that surround, in that light, on that surface, and none of those come with the can. Module 3 shows the surround effect; Module 4 shows the light; Module 8 shows the surface and the sheen. Inspiration tells you what you are after. The plan tells you how to get it with what you have. The brief tool asks where the folder is kept and what the images have in common; it does not ask what to buy.

5. An achievable first project

You will not do the whole home at once, even if the whole home is the goal. You will do one room first, properly, with the method of Modules 2 to 9, and then scale what you learned. Choosing that room well matters more than most people expect, and the course suggests four things to look for.

• One room (or one zone of an open plan). A room is a unit you can observe, sample and finish. Two rooms doubles the comparisons and halves the attention.
• Used often. You need to see it at the hours you really use it, and you need the result to matter daily so that you notice what worked and what did not. A guest room is a poor teacher.
• Fixed elements known. The sort for this room is mostly settled: you know the floor stays, the sofa stays, the trim stays. Then every sample in Module 9 is tested against real neighbors, and the result is a decision rather than a guess about a room that might change under it.
• A change that is visible and cheap. One wall, a set of textiles, a lamp and bulbs, a rug: something you can afford inside this year's budget and see from the doorway. A kitchen with new cabinets is a renovation, not a first project.

Notice what is not on the list: the hardest room. The open plan that feels like two houses, the kitchen with the tile you hate, the hallway where every room's color meets: these are the rooms that made you take the course, and they are usually a hard place to start. The hardest room is where you are likely to make the most mistakes, and it is where mistakes cost most. The first project is a rehearsal. It is where you learn your own light, your own eye, how long a sample needs to sit on the wall before you trust it, and how you and the people you live with actually decide. Learn that in the room where a mistake is a cushion, then take it to the room where a mistake is a kitchen. If the hard room is the only one that really matters to you, or the only one you can change, starting there is a reasonable choice; write down why, go slower, and plan more testing.

Two more things the first project is not. It is not necessarily the first room a visitor sees; entries are often small, dark and full of doors, which often makes them better second projects than first ones. And it is not the only room that will be decided: Module 7 maps how rooms connect, and Module 11 assembles the whole plan. The first project is just the first room that reaches "confirmed."

6. Walking the home: camera and index cards

The practice at the end of this module is a walk through the rooms in play with a phone and a stack of index cards (or the inventory tool open on the phone). The walk has a shape, and it is worth knowing why.

The camera is for memory, not judgment. Photograph each room from its doorway, then each fixed element up close with a sheet of white paper in the frame. The paper gives you a reference later when you are looking at the photo and trying to remember whether the tile was yellowish or pinkish. But a photograph cannot tell you what color something is; Module 4 explains why (the phone adjusts the whole image, and the screen is not the wall). Photos go in the inventory as references ("photo 12, phone") so you can find the thing again, never as evidence of its color.

One card per thing. Room, item, which column of the sort, and one sentence. "Living room. Oak floor. Stays. Honey-colored, slightly orange in the afternoon." "Bedroom. Curtains. Can change. Thin, white, came with the flat." "Kitchen. Beige tile. Undecided: see how it looks beside chips, Module 3." Cards are good because they can be moved between piles on the table afterward, and the piles are the sort. If you use the tool instead, the status column is the pile.

Daytime, with the time written down. The walk is in daylight with the lamps off, so that the sentences you write are comparable with each other. If you use the rooms mostly in the evening, you will walk again at that hour in Module 4; for now, one condition, noted.

Three kinds of home do the walk a little differently.

Renters, and anyone who cannot paint. Walls and floors go in "stays" before you start, and so do the kitchen and the bathroom. The permission constraint goes in the brief as a fact: what the lease allows (removable hooks, bulbs and lamps, curtains on tension rods, a rug over the carpet). The walk then concentrates on belongings, textiles, lamps and the light, because those are the toolkit, and on describing the landlord's walls carefully, because they are the largest fixed element you have and they are often less neutral than they look.

One-room owners. Walk the one room, then stand in its doorway and write a card for everything you can see outside it: the hall floor, the next room's wall, the door across the landing. Those sightlines are the edge of the project (Module 7), and the one room has to agree with them even if they never change. Your first project is already chosen; the walk is for the sort.

Whole-home projects. Walk every room in play, in the order you move through the house, and add a card at each threshold saying what is visible from it. The sort is the same; it is simply longer, and it will probably take two sessions. Resist the temptation to start deciding as you walk. You will still choose one first project at the end, and the whole-home tools (the rooms map in Module 7, the schedule in Module 11) will be seeded from the rooms you listed in setup.

7. See it: five homes, five first projects See it

The five fictional homes that recur through the course each did this module. Their fixed elements are shown below as approximate screen swatches, so you can see what each plan has to answer to; the paragraphs that follow show how each household sorted, and why each chose the first project it did.

8. Practice: the walk-through inventory Practice

Time: 60 to 90 minutes. Materials: a phone camera, a stack of index cards (or the inventory tool open on the phone), a sheet of white paper, a notebook or the brief tool. Do it in daytime with the lamps off, and write the time on the first card.

1. Decide which rooms are in play. Write them on one card. If you are not sure, include every room you can see into from the one you care most about; you can drop rooms later, but a room that is visible from your first project is part of it whether you listed it or not.
2. Photograph each room from its doorway. One wide photo per doorway, lamps off. Number the photos in the notebook ("photo 1: living room from hall door") so the inventory can refer to them.
3. Write a card for every large surface. In each room: floor, walls, ceiling, trim, doors, window frames, and in kitchens and bathrooms the counters, cabinets, tile and any stone or brick. Room, item, one sentence about what it looks like in plain words ("pale, warm, slightly shiny"). Do not describe the four attributes yet; that is Module 2's job. Photograph each one close, with the white paper in the frame, and write the photo number on the card.
4. Write a card for every belonging that will matter. Sofa and chairs, rug, curtains and big textiles, wood furniture, art you will hang, collections on display, lamps. Skip small things. If a belonging is in a box because you have just moved, write the card anyway from memory and mark it "unseen in this light."
5. Sort the cards into three piles: stays, can change, undecided. Use the two habits: when in doubt, it stays; belongings count as much as surfaces. For every card in "undecided," write the question on the back and a date by which you expect to know ("ask landlord by Friday"; "compare beside chips, Module 3"; "get a recovering quote this month").
6. Write the constraints on one card each. Money (a number, and what it does not cover), permission (what you know and what you must ask), time (deadline or none, weekends or evenings), people (each person, one line, in their words if you can get them), the building (age, style, anything you already know about its light).
7. Write the goals. Three to five sentences about the home and the people, each naming a room or a use and a feeling or a need. If a sentence contains a color, keep it if you love that color, and add what the color is supposed to do, so the goal can be checked.
8. Collect the inspiration. Put every image you have been saving into one folder and write beside each what you liked about it in a few words. Notice what the words have in common; that is often a goal you had not written down. Start a separate, empty shopping list and leave it empty.
9. Choose the first project. Test each candidate room against the four criteria: one room, used often, fixed elements known, a change that is visible and cheap. If the room you most want to fix misses the third or fourth, it usually makes a better goal than a first project; you can pick a room that passes and write down that the hard room comes second, or start with the hard room on purpose and write down why. Either way, write the first project on a card with the reason.
10. Enter it all. Put the cards into the inventory (one row per card, with the status column as the pile and the photo numbers in the photo column) and write the brief, the household lines and the first project into the brief tool. If you started on paper, this is the moment to type; a brief that lives in a notebook is harder to check decisions against later.

If you are doing this with someone else, do steps 5 and 7 separately and then compare piles and sentences. The disagreements are not a problem to be settled today; they are the most useful information the brief will hold.

9. Your home Your home

10. Check your work Check your work

Criteria

• Every large surface and every belonging that matters in the rooms in play has a card or a row, and each one is in exactly one of the three columns.
• Every "undecided" item has a question and a date on it.
• The constraints are written as facts: a number for money, what the lease or the household allows, a deadline or "none," each person in one line.
• The goals are sentences about the home and the people; where one names a color, it also says what the color is for.
• The inspiration folder exists and each image has a few words beside it; the shopping list exists and is empty.
• The first project meets the four criteria, or you have written down which it misses and why you chose it anyway; and if it is not the room you most want to fix, you have written down when that room comes.

Worked example

Nneka and Sam at Juniper Court (fictional) walked both halves of the open plan on a Saturday morning and wrote thirty-one cards. Stays: the quartz, the espresso cabinets, the floor, the rust sofa and the trim. Can change: walls on both sides, the rug, cushions, the pendant shades, art. Undecided: the tan armchairs (Sam would keep them as they are, Nneka would recover them; "get a recovering quote by the end of the month" on the back), and the dining chairs. Constraints: about two thousand dollars this year, no permission issues, a deadline of nothing in particular, two adults who agree about the goal and disagree about the chairs, a house from 2014 with a lot of afternoon light on the living side. Goals: "the kitchen and the living room should feel like one house"; "the sofa should look like we chose it for this room"; "the everyday clutter should not be the first thing you see." First project: the living side, because the kitchen's finishes are fixed and known and the living side has the wall that can change and the furniture they chose. The armchairs stay undecided and nothing in the first project depends on them. That is a complete module: thirty-one cards, two honest unknowns with dates, three checkable goals, one defensible first project.

Common mistakes

• Starting with the hardest room by default. It is the room that drove you here, and it is where mistakes cost most. Rehearse somewhere cheaper if you can; if you start there on purpose, say why and plan more testing.
• Writing goals only as colors. "Sage walls" on its own cannot be checked against anything. Keep the sage if you love it, and add what it is for.
• Leaving belongings out of the sort. A sofa you will keep for a decade is as fixed as the floor and often more colorful. Sort it.
• Treating "undecided" as a parking lot. Without a question and a date it is where decisions go to be avoided. With them, it is a to-do list.
• Mixing the inspiration folder and the shopping list. A saved image is a goal in disguise, not an order. Nothing is bought until Module 9.
• Judging colors during the walk. The walk collects; Modules 2 and 3 describe and compare. A sentence like "the tile is pinkish" written today is a guess until it has a neighbor.

What is still unresolved

• What the fixed elements actually look like, in attributes you can compare: Module 2.
• Which way each of them leans beside its neighbors, and whether "undecided" items like a beige tile belong with the warm things or the cool: Module 3.
• Whether the first project's room looks the same at the hours you use it as it did on the walk: Module 4.
• Which of the "can change" items are worth changing first, and which wait: Module 10.

11. Knowledge check and scenario

Before you move on

• I walked the rooms in play in daylight, photographed each from its doorway, and have a card or row for every large surface and every belonging that matters.
• Every item is sorted into stays, can change or undecided, and every undecided item has a question and a date.
• My constraints are written as facts (a number, a permission, a deadline, each person) and my goals are sentences about the home and the people; any color I named comes with what it is for.
• My inspiration is in one folder with a few words beside each image, and my shopping list is empty.
• I have chosen a first project, checked it against the four criteria, and entered it in the brief tool with the reason.