Do you find it challenging to match colors and styles when shopping for your home? There’s a simple tool you can create to make this process so much easier. Set up a set of kits with samples of all of your flooring, countertops, paint and fabric – organized by room.

When you have new flooring installed, grab a small piece of carpeting, a tile fragment or a piece of wood or your sheet vinyl. That’s your start. Next, as you paint, cover a sturdy piece of paper with your paint. Don’t rely on paint chips for your color, because the actual paint color will always be different. If you started your painting with a poster-board sampler, just cut a corner of your selected sample to put into your book.

Having furniture recovered? Ask for the fabric scraps and add a piece to your collection. If you can’t get your fabric or for existing furniture, check the hem to see if you can clip a little bit to give you that color or pattern. Do the same for any curtains in the space. To do color matching for other key pieces of furniture or accessories, go to your home improvement store and grab some paint chips in the right color range, and take them home to find the best match.

Finally, take a couple of photos of the room. You can put everything in a sturdy notebook, or even put each room’s samples in separate large envelopes or photo boxes and label them. When you go shopping for additional pieces, or even replacements years from now, you will be ready with the samples you need to match colors and styles.