You want to paint before lights I think. I wouldn't want painters painting around my lights. Plus, the way it happened here is that they put a first coat on, then lots of construction, patching drywall, etc. and they are just now painting the second coat. Can lights were in for second coat and chandeliers were hung after paint was done

Paint choices are hard. I painted colors on that huge foamboard and looked at it in all lights, in my current house and in my new one. I wasn't as worried about night - figured it would look the same as it does in my house at night - but sunlight does bring out various undertones in paint.

I agree, we complete our paint and no fixtures (plumbing, lighting, cabinets, etc) are installed. We will have final touch ups done once we get those items installed but the bulk should be completed early.

We just started wall paint last week, after lighting was all installed. But, we've questioned a lot of the timing of things with this build.

Our painting was done before lighting was installed. Like athensmomof3, I painted large sheets of posterboard to get a better idea if it was the color that we wanted. I just kept them in sight so we could observe during different times of the day. It's hard to choose - good luck!

Our painting was before lighting as well, with the exception of baseboards. We gave the baseboards one coat and will do the second after the floors are finished.

Same here...a rough first coat of paint was done fairly early. The lights later. The final coat of paint will be done this week or next now that the lights have been installed and we're less than a month from moving in.

I was a nut about paint but have a good eye for color and undertones so that helped. I sat with my paint decks and house plans and looked at my room inspiration photos so I could get a sense of how I wanted each room to feel. I based my initial color choices on that. In the beginning I had tons of choices for each room but kept narrowing them down, making sure the colors flowed from room to room. I then grabbed a few poster boards and went to Benjamin Moore and got some sample cans, painted the posters to take to the house and held them up in the natural light in the actual rooms.

Our interior designer had paint and wall-coverings selected before we even started framing ;)

Painting was done before lights...and while all the windows were still covered with that protective plastic which made it impossible to really see how the sunlight coming thru the windows would affect colors.

I know everybody says study your paint chips in the rooms where you'll be applying it so you can see how the natural light and the artificial lights in THAT room affect the color. Maybe that works when redecorating but in a new build, forget it.

I painted foam boards and studied them in the rooms in my old house that had windows facing in the same (or similar) directions as the rooms in the new house would. It worked out well enough for daylight and incandescent lighting. In fact my paint colors looked even better under natural light conditions in the new house than I had anticipated b/c I have so many more windows.

One problem I ran into tho was how the paint colors would look under CFL bulbs. We didn't have any CFLs in the old house and I assumed I would want the "daylight" CFLs because those would be truest to the daylight that I had studied my paint colors under. WRONG! Daylight CFLs have a very bluish tone and my major paint color (SW Frangipane) is a lovely warm soft peach tone. Under "daylight" CFLs it turns into a horrible greyish beige. UGH. I almost cried when I first saw it.

But, the solution turned out to be as simple replacing all the "daylight" CFLs with "soft white" CFLs that have a much warmer tone. I still have about $500 worth of daylight CFLs stored away in a closet that I will never use. But at least I didn't have to repaint the entire house.