Eye Colour

After painting three rooms over the last year, I have to concede defeat and admit my husband has a better eye for choosing paint colours than I. {Now, if he's not reading this himself, there's no need to tell him I said this}. But it is true. It's not so much about choosing the colour and colour combos, I'm good with that. I have a very clear vision about what colour I want and what I want it to look like on the wall. It's more about determining which paint chip will actually deliver that vision. That's where D's eye is better than mine.

It seems I underestimate how much lighter the paint shades are once on the wall compared to what they are on the chips. I also tend to be a bit cautious about going too dark with colours. I'm OK with bold and different colours, I just don't want to feel like I'm living in a dungeon. So even when my vision is for a specific darker shade and feel, at the paint store I still veer for the lighter shades on the paint chips. This inevitably leads to intense discussions between D and I about what we're going to get. Three rooms in (the kitchen, the nursery and now our bedroom) I realize I should just go with D's instincts as he's batting 3 for 0.

Anywhoo... for the bedroom, we both knew we wanted a nice rich grey tone for the walls, but we couldn't agree on which of the paint chip shades to go with. We narrowed it down to three and picked up the small sample cans. They're not exactly cheap at $8 a pop, but certainly a good investment as neither of our first three shades worked for us. The darker one and the medium (middle) one were more blue than grey and the lighter one (my choice) was so light it was almost white!

We went back to the paint shop again, consulted with the staff some more, and narrowed it down to three more shades and picked up three more sample cans. Again the lighter shade (my choice) was much, much too light. We initially liked both of the darker shades and decided to live with them for a bit. After a day or so and viewing the shades in various lights, both D and I preferred the same shade called Whale Grey by Benjamin Moore (the one on the far right).

With gallons of paint, rollers, and brushes in hand, we got down to business.

We luuuuurve it. A nice rich, darkish grey that doesn't overwhelm the space. It works very nicely with our new dark hardwood floors. Once accented with some fresh white trimming and a few pops of colour, it'll be mah-velous dah-ling.

lighting doesn't do it justice ... I'll try for better in a future post

Right now, we're just waiting on getting the fresh mouldings and baseboards in place, which will hopefully be next week. Then we'll move the rest of the furniture back in (right now it's just our bed ... no side tables, no dresser, no vanity, nada!) and I'll get moving on bedding, windows,  and accents - wheeee! Stay tuned for more...