Steve White: Hi, my name is Steve White with MasterCraft Painting and now we are going to talk about color selection. This is a process which a lot of people have lot of difficulty with and we actually at times recommend that designers get involved but it's not necessary. The biggest thing to keep in mind if you want to choose colors for your home is to just drive around your neighborhood and take a look at similar homes, find some colors that you like and don't be ashamed to go up and knock on the door and say I really like your colors, where did you get them? Find out about the colors and then visit your paint store and pick out some colors you think might work and actually put some samples on the wall. That's the best way to visualize it.

What we have done on this house is we showed the owner one of these what they call Fan Decks that you can get at any paint store and it has hundreds and hundreds of colors and what she has done is she has picked out some greens that she's liked and we have got some samples and we actually applied them to the wall over here. One of the most important things to do when choosing your paint is to make sure that you use high quality paint. There are some what they call contractor grades or low grade paints and I really don't ever recommend using those on your homes exterior because for the cost that you will save it's really not worth it in the long run.

The premium quality paints have higher acrylic content and they are going to stand up to the Sun and the wind and the rain a lot longer than your low grade paints. The difference is really minimal and I recommend premium acrylic paints. So now we have got our color selected, let's move on to the most important part of any paint job and that is surface preparation.