Friends, we did a brave and fearful thing this weekend: we went to Home Depot. To look at paint. For a house on which we have not yet closed.
(Did you hear that? That’s the sound of me throwing salt over my shoulder while rubbing a rabbit’s foot and picking up an abandoned penny in an effort to ward off the jinx that we surely have brought upon ourselves by daring to start planning decor before everything is fully squared away.)
Anyway, the current (soon-to-be previous) owners of our new house had…aggressive taste in paint. They have two children, and boy and a girl. The girl’s room is PINK! Like the color of Strawberry Shortcake toys or Disney Princess costumes or something else that is some horrible, saturated shade of pink. PINK. The boy’s room, not surprisingly, is blue. Deep, rich, color-of-the-ocean blue. Now, normally I wouldn’t have such strong objections to the blue, but immediately adjacent to the PINK! room, it’s too much. Add to these the weird yellow wallpaper covered with random Italian words (“pizza!” “Opera!” “grazie!”) and the bathroom that’s painted in candy cane stripes and we’ve got some work to do, is what I’m saying.
So we went to Home Depot to look at paint colors.
News flash: we are really boring.
We left Home Depot with every single shade of celery green, greenish-gray, and khaki that they had, I swear to god. We probably selected 20 paint chips, from which you could randomly select 3 and they would all match because they are all a mere shade or two apart from one another. I know that having choices in life is good, but I can safely say that when it comes to paint? TOO MANY CHOICES.
Currently spread out on our dining room are three paint chips: palest sage, hazy sage, and gentle sage. John and I are currently locked in a battle of wills over the correct shade of sage. I wish I were kidding. We’re going to be lucky if we select paint colors by the time winter rolls around. Can you imagine if we had to actually do any real work to the house? We’d be those people who had a hole in the side of the house for years where the addition was supposed to go.
I say tape your paint samples on the wall and throw darts. Runner-up solution: Rock Paper Scissors.
We waffled for months over the Just Right Shade of yellow. Too gold! Too brassy! Too sunny! Blech.
Also, I love the color pink in/on almost all things except walls. On walls it somehow turns nauseating.
You could put all the pain chips in a bag, close your eyes and pick.
I mean to say “paint chips”, but pain chips work too!
I think muted wall colors are just fine. We have a little of both, the boring and the POP of color-type walls, and I enjoy both equally. On the more subtle walls there’s a lot more you can do in terms of decor, for one thing. Once you’ve painted a room BLUE, though, no matter how much you love that blue, you’re a bit limited with what else you can do. You are COMMITTED to blue.
At least you’ve gotten as far as picking paint samples. We managed to pick a color for the nursery (and only then because I am more stubborn/bullheaded than Torsten, and also I cared more, though I will say in my own defense that we BOTH absolutely love how it turned out), but that’s it. Everything else in our house is still beige because we have no idea what color we want to paint it.
Looking at paint is not boring. Watching paint dry? Boring. Choosing paint for a house-to-be? All kinds of awesome.
I remember trying to choose the right shade of yellow for our downstairs. I wanted not YELLOW-yellow but sort of a warm brownish yellow, but not ICKY-looking just not SUNSHINEY either, and AAAACKKKK. I had a fistful of paint samples and I would pause TV programs saying, “Wait! Wait! They have the color I want!” and holding my paint chips up to the screen.
Oh man. I’m a renter and I always fantasize about being able to pick my own paint colors when I finally buy a house, but I just know I’ll spend months dithering and then probably slightly regret whatever color I eventually choose.
(Geez, how’s that for optimism?! Sorry!)
I mean, I am sure you guys will pick the perfect color and LOVE it!
I recall being nearly paralyzed with the overwhelmingness of paint color choices when we bought our apartment. We eventually limited ourselves to ONE paint collection (Benjamin Moore Classic, I believe) and narrowed down color families for each room (taupe, gray, blue — we are lovers of neutrals and blues), and then took the required leap of faith in nailing down the chosen shades. I only ended up with Color Regret in one room, and we had time to pick another color and repaint the room before we moved in. Whew.
IN my opinion, you can’t pick paint from those tiny squares… I say buy the samples for your favorite 3 and paint a big piece of posterboard (so you can move it around to different rooms) to decide.
Have fun! And good luck on closing!
Jenny
I second Jenny’s advice on the samples. No matter what you think it will look like from the chip, it will be different depending on the light in the room, etc. Or you could just buy dried sage and hot glue it to the walls- it’s a color! it’s aromatherapy!
my mom’s advice when i was dithering over the correct shade of Boring Neutral to paint my house was similar to Jenny’s – tack up the paint chips on the wall so you can see them in different lights / different areas / in the morning / at night with lamplight etc. made my decision surprisingly easy, especially once i looked at the price of 2 of my final 4 selections and had to automatically reject those.
When we chose paint colors for our old OLD apartment we used my friend who was an interior decorator. MAN did that help because really, the thought of doing it myself made me have an anxiety attack.
But paint! Paint makes everything so much better! I can’t wait to come and see the house!!!!