Hands up if your customer has asked you for your opinion on their colour choice - is it too dark? Will it match the sofa? What colours go with it? Sound familiar? We at Dulux Decorator Centre understand the pressures on professional decorators to offer colour and design advice, so we've come up with a suite of tools to help you guide your customer in finding a choice they're happy with. Here's how to use them in response to frequently asked colour questions:

What colours go together?

If your customer has a colour in mind but is struggling to find shades to complement it for either the trim or adjacent walls and surfaces, the Dulux Decorator Centre App can help. It has hundreds of ready-made colour palettes, and suggests two additional complementary colours for every shade. Another failsafe way of finding a second or third colour is the Dulux Trade colour card. Each one shows a spectrum of tonal variations of the same colour, so your customer can pick lighter and a darker versions from the card for a subtle colour scheme.

Tools: Dulux Decorator Centre App and Dulux Trade Colour cards

Can you match this colour?

Customers will look to many different brands to find 'the one'. When they find it, they can recreate the exact shade with Dulux Trade so that they get the exceptional quality and finish they're looking for without compromising their vision. Match your customer's favourite colour at our paint mixing facilities at your local Dulux Decorator Centre, then take away a colour card to leave with your client so they can compare it and finalise their decision.

Tools: Dulux Trade Colour cards

What will it look like when it dries?

When customers are looking at wet paint on the wall or product in the tin, they can find it hard to visualise how they colour will look once up on the wall and dry. The DDC app has a visualisation tool that virtually paints surfaces at the touch of a screen in real time, so you can show your customer how their space will look quickly and easy. A picture says a thousand words after all. Always recommend to your customer that they try out shades they like on the wall first, before making a final decision on colour. It's crucial they see what the colour will look like in different lights, at different times of day and if possible, in different areas of the room. Advise them to use some of your tricks of the trade, such as painting the tester on a large piece of lining paper and moving it around the room in different lights.

Tools:  Dulux Decorator Centre app and tester pots.

Which shade of grey/white/magnolia should I choose?

It's safe to say the majority of your customers will choose a colour in the neutrals spectrum, whether that's grey, white, magnolia or anything in between. There are hundreds of neutral shades to choose between, so no wonder customers find it tricky to decide. This is where the visualisation tool on your Dulux Decorator Centre app comes in handy again; showing your customer what their space would look like in a particular colour before they've even ordered a tester can help them narrow down their choice and help them save both time and money.

Tools:  Dulux Decorator Centre app

Will this go with my decor?

From research, we know that your customers tend to choose colours to go with existing furnishings and belongings - usually sofas, curtains, carpets and the like. Whether they're looking for the perfect match to a fabric, or a colour that will look great alongside it, the Dulux Decorator Centre app has an inbuilt Colour Picker tool that can assist clients in completing a scheme. Using the app, scan your customer's colour reference with your device, and it will instantly match the shade and suggest ready-made colour schemes based on it, taking out all the guesswork in choosing a shade.

Tools:  Dulux Decorator Centre app

Download the Dulux Decorator Centre app for free 

 or go to our colour pages for inspiration around current trends.