When I was a kid, we moved into a new house and my parents foolishly kindly let me pick out the colors for my new room. Given this sort of power for the first time I of course decided to use it wisely and make everything purple. I had purple walls, purple wall-to-wall carpeting, a purple bedspread, and curtains with purple flowers on them. It wasn’t so much a color palette as it was just purple. They very kindly let me change things up just a few years later.
An artist’s recreation of my childhood bedroom. (Yes, I am the artist.)
So when we bought our home and started decorating, I vowed to be wiser than my 11-year old self and go for a color palette with a bit more longevity. Given the dingy beige walls and forest green carpeting that we inherited, we wanted to go with bright whites, clean/un-muddy colors, and some fun contrast to really cheer the place up. It needed it!
Otherwise, we didn’t go in with a plan, but just tested colors like crazy until we settled on a handful that we both liked: blues, grays, with hits of teal and yellow.
(All of the colors are Benjamin Moore because we like their Natura line, which has zero VOCs.)
Our ceilings, trim, and the hallway that connects all our rooms are in Chantilly Lace, a very white-white which makes everything it touches feel clean and fresh. With my somewhat hectic “decorating style,” having that as a neutral really helps to calm things down.
Even though we thought our ceilings were white before, we still put up a fresh coat of Chantilly Lace throughout before we moved in, and I’m so glad we did. Just look at the difference from the “less clean” white that was there before!
We have somewhat low ceilings, and the extra brightness goes a long way to making them feel higher and less oppressive. Also, fresh paint just makes everything better!
The other color that runs throughout the house is Yellowstone, which we used in The Great Door Project to transform our ugly, boring, beige hollow-core doors from eyesores into cheerful contributors to each room’s overall look. Because this is on every interior door, it’s important for it to “go” with the color of each room.
I tried a ton of different yellows and picked Yellowstone because it is bright but not insane, and runs a bit to the mustard side of things without feeling dingy.
I love having a bright color in this unexpected place! It really livens up our other colors (which for me are very restrained).
The walls of the whole front area of the house – our living room, dining room, and kitchen – are all painted Marlboro Blue.
Brad picked this color out of the thousands of blues we tested, and I have to admit I was worried it could feel a little dingy. But he has a good eye, and on the walls it feels like a clean sky blue.
By painting all these rooms the same color, we wanted to give the impression that they were all part of one big space, rather than three small, choppy rooms. We took out a lot of the dividing walls during our renovation and this was a big part of how we were going to make this space work for us.
Our bedroom color, Iced Slate, is the strangest one for us, as it almost borders on a pastel. I stumbled upon it when trying to find a nice light gray, and somehow it got under my skin. It is hard to define, as it often looks gray-blue, but is clean and fresh in the mornings and fades to a dusky lavender as the sun sets.
I’m still deciding whether I love it or hate it. (It’s been two years.)
The bathroom gave us a lot of trouble. Since the floor is beige and all the tile is painted white (not by us), we wanted to do something bold with the walls. We considered red or green, but were concerned they wouldn’t fit in with the rest of our house. When sanding the walls to prep them for painting we could see that the previous owners had tried many varieties of pink and yellow over the years, but those didn’t seem right for us either.
Finally, inspired by my friend Jessica who was telling me about how much she loved her charcoal and white bathroom, we picked Ashland Slate, a dark gray which runs slightly (but not very) blue. It really grounds all the white.
I also wanted to do something crazy and bold in my office/closet/dressing room. It is my own space and isn’t one that I am usually living in for many hours at a time, so it seemed like a good place to take a risk. I briefly considered red, but this room used to be bright green, and it somehow seemed rude to take it too far from those grand roots. I decided to go for a dark teal.
I tried a TON of samples. That is a hard color to get right! Teal can go tropical real fast, and has to walk a fine line between blue and green.
Yes, the smiley face is part of my VERY scientific paint sample testing process.
In the end, I chose Calypso Blue, which is lying about being a blue because it is really an excellent teal. It is pretty intense but I love it against the crisp white trim and bright yellow. It is such a cheerful room!
Finally, in the library/guest room, which we just finished, we decided on a neutral gray. We do love colors with personality, but this is a room which will host a lot of our mismatched, leftover furniture and we wanted it to be flexible. We chose Gray Owl, a light gray without much blue or taupe in it.
I like that it is airy and calm, but still provides nice contrast against the white trim.
We still have a few more spaces to do, like our three-season porch and stairway to the basement, so this will be an evolving picture. Still, I think we’ll stay within this overall palette. We’re loving it so far, and we’ve even lived with it for longer than I lived with my purple bedroom!
(Sharing at One Project at a Time, Weekend Re-Treat Link Party, DIY Showoff, Link Party Palooza, and Tip Me Tuesday)
Then to make the brackets even less noticeable, I painted the bottoms of them turquoise to blend in with the shelves, using painters tape to get a clean line.
