RENOVATIONS PART 9: Get your paint on

Marcey Lefkowitz, also an interior designer at Reflections, said specialty paint stores stock better products than big box stores.

"I'm not saying that I've never bought paint at Lowe's or Home Depot, but at a specialty paint store, you know you're getting the quality that you need to have," Lefkowitz said.

When helping her clients choose a color scheme for a room or an entire home, Guthals said she starts with the basics.

"A lot of times I start with what it is they like to wear, because it's a reflection of what color scheme you're probably comfortable with," Guthals said. "Or, if they have a favorite painting or a pillow or something else that they're comfortable with a lot of times you can design backwards from that."

Serena Spell, a design consultant at Reflections, recommends focusing on the colors in your fabrics when choosing paint.

"One of the things I will do is have them pick a fabric first and then base the wall color or other accents in the room off of that fabric," Spell said. "That's usually going to be the bigger investment and the harder thing to find. It's easy to pick a paint color, it's not as easy to pick a fabric."

Like the designers at Reflections, Lee Roth Designs founder Lee Roth has spotted a change in homeowners' desired color palette.

"Things have been moving a little bit more blues and greens," Roth said. "We've had years and years of the reds and golds, which will always be good in Colorado because of the landscape and the Western nature of where we are, but it's refreshing to see some of the little bit more lighter and airy colors."

Roth said her suggestions for color depend mostly upon a room's lighting and location.

"If a bedroom or family room is on the north side, you can paint it a little warmer color because those rooms tend to feel, especially in the winter time, really cold," Roth said.

"In a room on the south side, I'd paint something a little bit cooler because you get a lot of the summer sun and it's just really yellow all afternoon, so I would paint this a little cooler tone like taupe or the steel blues coming in mixed with chocolate or espresso colors."

Roth agrees with the designers at Reflections that specialty paint stores are a great place to gather ideas for a room's color scheme.

"Every paint store has brochures that they put out that have coordinated paint colors," Roth said. "For somebody that's just starting out or wanting to redo something, (brochures) are a really easy way to go because somebody's already done the legwork."

Above all, Roth said, homeowners shouldn't be afraid to let their imaginations run wild when redesigning with paint.

"You've got to use your creativity and sometimes you have to fly by the seat of your pants," she said.

"Sometimes it's successful and sometimes it's not, but if you're just talking paint, it's not that expensive to go buy a gallon of paint and paint over what you've already done if you don't like it."

Roth and the interior designers at Reflections agree that enlisting the help of an interior designer shouldn't be a daunting experience.

"It can be confusing for people because sometimes they don't know where to start," Roth said. "They don't know what's going to make them happy, so that becomes my job to help them plan."

Spell said sometimes homeowners don't want to hire a designer because they falsely believe a designer's taste will clash with their own.

"We have our own homes, so we're not there to impose our style on you," Spell said.

"We're there to help give you the tools to bring out your style and get your home the way you see it in your head."