How To Organize Paint Colors

Have you ever stood in your storage room or garage, looking at 10 different gallons of paint, trying to remember which color you used in your living room?  Yes, I’m guilty of this too!  Even the most detailed person can sometimes forget what paint color goes where, especially if you love a certain color and have about 5 different variations in your home.  It’s time to stop staring at paint gallons and get organized.  I am so excited to show you my whole house paint binder and how to organize paint colors for your home.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.  I always appreciate your support!

Creating a Paint Binder

I may be partial to binders, because they come in adorable prints, but they are also a great way to stay organized.  To create my paint binder, I first picked up a 1″ binder.  You can easily grab a bigger binder if you think you will need more space.

Next, I needed to create some printables to help organize the colors in my home.  I have those printables available for you on my Etsy shop.  The goal was to create a visual color scheme for each room in my house. Plus to get a glimpse at your whole house color palette, I included a sheet for that as well.

To put this paint binder together you will need:

Binder 

Paint Binder Printables (available on my Etsy shop)

Sheet Protectors

Additional Paint Swatch Holders

Organizing Paint Colors

Before I had my paint binder, I would always keep my paint swatches, but never had a specific place where they belonged.

After I bought my binder, the first task was to sort through the swatches and separate them into two piles. The first pile included all the paint colors I currently have in my home.  The second pile included all the extra paint samples I wanted to keep, but were not used in my home.

As you fill in the binder, you will want to pick up some additional paint swatches (especially if you use the same color in multiple rooms). I had to do this to complete my binder as well.

Whole House Color Palette

Filling in your whole house color palette is a great way to see if all the colors in your home flow together.  With mine, you can easily spot the two rooms that I haven’t yet updated: the kitchen and the living room!  I am hoping to repaint both of these rooms soon.

Placing all the paint swatches from your entire house creates a great visual.  It becomes very helpful as you pick out paint colors in the future.  You can easily place a paint swatch on your page and see how it flows with the rest of the rooms.

Extra Paint Swatches

I bought these pocket card protectors to easily store extra paint swatches.  I love having a place to put all my extra swatches, a girl can never have too many!

Label Your Paint

I absolutely love having all the paint colors organized, but the binder is only half of your paint organization.  It is important to also have all your paint gallons clearly labeled.  I went down to the basement, where I store my paint, and found one of my favorite colors Palladian Blue by Benjamin Moore. As you can see in the picture, the label is clear of paint and easy to read.

Some of my gallons are covered in paint, ok maybe a lot of them because I am not the cleanest painter.  However, if that is the case, grab a black sharpie and write the paint color down somewhere on the gallon where you can see it.

Once you have your paint labeled and your paint binder completed, there will be no more standing in front of paint gallons wondering which room it is for! 

Thanks so much for checking out my post. If you have more paint organizing ideas to share, leave them in the comments below.  I would love to hear them!