Picture your favorite place in nature. Visualize the shades and textures. Note the generous background colors, then pick out the accent colors that pop. Capture those images in your mind and enjoy.

Now, visualize the rooms in your home. Do you see a background of sienna clay or twilight gold? Are your walls filled with the depth of Santa Fe pottery or the excitement of Moroccan red? Or do you see an endless wall of white?

If you are ready to reinvent your interior space, then the addition of color via beautifully painted walls, ceilings and trim is the answer.

The addition of painted walls continues to be the fastest and least expensive way to update a room. And, thanks to modern technology and a number of businesses offering design assistance, pulling your color palette together has never been easier.

Details of Marysville is one local business that offers a design consultation service.

“Color changes the room dramatically,” said Barb Calkins, a sales associate at Details. “Often people don’t know how to start. When working with a customer we usually take our clues from their carpet, upholstery or a picture. We work around and expand upon those colors.”

Mary Beth Person, another of Details’ sales associates, reminds customers that they don’t need to change everything in the room to have a totally different look.

“You can move things from room to room and restyle the look,” Person said. “It’s easy to go out and buy what you want, but it’s a challenge to use what you already have.”

In restyling a room, the use of paint provides a low-cost option for providing a newly invented look. Your choice, whether it’s a timeless color based on nature’s palette or a trendy hue captured from the fashion runways, is easily applied, and just as easily changed if you tire of the color.

At Hatloe’s Carpet One and Paint in Everett, color is a popular topic of conversation. Design associate Davey Tuncap takes a holistic approach to color selection, often making color boards of the client’s textiles, flooring samples and additional color details within the room.

“Once I know the colors they like, I ask if they want something that’s soft and subtle or something to make a statement,” Tuncap said. “I usually pull out four different shades of color and use that as a springboard to pull the color scheme together.”

At times Tuncap mixes logic and emotion in making a color choice, giving his clients a color challenge:

“I ask them to pick a color, then pick a color that is one half shade lighter and one half shade darker. I also ask them to choose an impulse color — one they didn’t initially think of.”

Once customers arrive home, they have a chance to see how the selection works in their rooms.

Tuncap’s associate, Larry Lonkamp, also has a design trick that he shares with clients.

“If we do a consult in a house, I’ll ask to look in the clothes closet. A lot of times, the clothes that we wear are a clue to what colors we want on our walls.”

The staff at Hatloe’s is also trained in the science of color. Color has the highest impact on everything you put in a room, including yourself. Color can make your emotions pop, sizzle, soothe or warm. Yellows tend to lighten and brighten a room as well as your spirit. Shades of blue are as relaxing and tranquil as the water and sky they emulate. If you’re looking for decadence, chocolate brown walls may be the answer.

Another source of assistance in choosing your home’s colors is the Internet. Many paint companies now provide a personal color viewer and virtual fan deck on their Web sites. Personal color viewer programs allow you to experiment with color and specialty finishes before you pick up a paintbrush. Some programs even allow you to upload images of your own project.

Virtual fan decks give access to the entirety of the paint company’s color palette. In most cases you can search by color family, fan deck name, color names or color numbers.

The latest trends in colors can also be found on Web sites. At the Benjamin Moore Web site, www.benjaminmoore.com, you’ll find a room painted with Blue Echo, a rich, warm shade that works beautifully with the tints Jojoba and Anjou Pear. At Hatloe’s, colors such as Spa, Wasabi and Citrine are popular choices.

Benjamin Moore’s Web site also features Aura, their latest paint technology. The breakthrough technology, called Color Lock, is the only one of its kind in the industry, providing discernibly richer color paired with maximum coverage.

Of course, color choices for your rooms aren’t limited to the walls. Brent LeBlanc, sales associate with Lambert Gray Inc., works with customers faced with a different form of color choice. Working at the Lambert Gray kitchen design center in Marysville, LeBlanc assists clients in choosing stains for their new cabinetry.

“Our cabinetry is available in several species of wood, including red oak, white oak, maple, cherry, hickory and alder,” LeBlanc said. “Usually all the stain choices are seen throughout each species of wood.”

Choosing a stain is similar to choosing a paint color, with samples available for checkout to see how your choice looks in your environment.

“If the client wants our opinion, we go to the home to see the room and setting,” LeBlanc said. “We want to learn the client’s tastes and see if they want their kitchen to stand out or be more subdued.”

For those who desire a bold-looking kitchen, two types of stain, paint, or a combination of the two can be chosen. The main portion of the kitchen can be done in a lighter stain, with a kitchen island, for example, stained a deeper color.

“A great choice for accent pieces is the doors,” LeBlanc said. Within Lambert Gray’s showroom is a group of stained cabinetry with soft cream door fronts. The combination, laid out against deep taupe walls, creates a dramatic visual.

Another attractive addition to a cabinetry project is the use of glaze.

“Different companies do glazing in different ways,” LeBlanc said. “We like it when they hand wipe the glaze over the entire surface.” The glaze penetrates the different crevices, angles and recesses of the cabinetry. A second method, pen glazing, adds the depth of detail, but is only used in creviced areas.

Whatever cabinetry options are chosen, LeBlanc reminds customers that stain, paint and countertop colors are affected by both natural and incandescent light throughout the day as well as the surrounding colors and surfaces such as flooring and tile.

LeBlanc also encourages customers to look in various places for ideas before making their final selection.

“If you’re open to looking at new ideas, look at kitchen and design books,” he said. Magazines often list manufacturer and product information at the back of each issue, and because they often feature professionally designed rooms, they are a valuable tool when making any of your color choices.