Choosing a Color Scheme

When I was "auditioning" for schools as a kindergartener, there was a school I didn't get into because I couldn't name my colors. (If you ask my parents, it was because I didn't say a word during the entire interview-quiz. Maybe the nuns scared me.) I did, eventually, learn my colors and became very confident in my ability to name them.

Until now.

In trying to create a color scheme for my space, I've learned that the hardest part isn't figuring out what colors I should add, it's figuring out what colors are already there. Take, for example, my couch. What color is it? I don't know. I mean, it's brown. But I can't point it out on a color wheel. And if I don't know where it is on the color wheel, how can I know what's directly across from it? Or the two colors equidistant from it?

I want to figure this out because I'm not starting from scratch. I'm not going to buy a new sofa. I'm not going to buy a new dining table. I could buy new sheets, but I probably won't. I have to consciously think about color moving forward, and I want to be precise.

If you can eyeball your stuff and estimate the right color, more power to you. But if you're a perfectionist and need a precise palette, here's a way to do it:

Step 1: Take a photo of the largest "thing" in your room. I'm going to make a color scheme for my living room, and everything is going to be centered around my sofa.

Step 2: Upload the photo here. This website will tell you the specific RGB/hex # of any image you upload. (There're apps on your phone that can do this, too, but I haven't found one that'll give you the hex #) Here's my couch-swatch:

Step 3: Copy the Hex # and paste it here. It'll give you all the popular color schemes--and if you hover over the other colors, you can find their info as well.

For my living room, I came up with this palette:

And now, the actually difficult part. Finding things in these colors...