Painting the Bedroom

Our bedroom makeover progress continues! Last I left you, I was agonizing over what color to paint the doors for the built-in closet we’ll build.

What color to paint the doors and what color to paint the walls felt highly related, as I thought white doors might look nice if I went with some color on the walls, while black, navy, or colorful doors could work if I went with white walls.

You all gave me lots of helpful feedback, and I also tried out some paint swatches for awhile to see how I felt about a very light blue on the walls. Naomi suggested it and we agreed it could look nice and tie in with the blues in my quilt.

I grabbed some really light blue swatches from the hardware store, and kept them up for about a month (because as you can tell, this project is not moving quickly).

Ultimately, though, I thought about how much I love the white walls in the kitchen, sunroom, and Sam’s study, especially because our rooms are small and our ceilings are low. Yes we’ve loved our dark cave of a bedroom, but I was ready for something light and airy, and finally decided I wanted to go with simple white walls and black closet doors. I think it will look simple and classic, while allowing the quilt to pop and the room overall to still feel pretty minimal (once we get the closet built, we’ll just have a bed and bedside tables, and the dressers will be hidden behind closed doors).

Sam was not enthused about the idea of painting this room (he pointed out that we’d already painted it once, and he liked the dark walls), but as usual I just told him we were doing it anyway and he would end up liking it. We compromise in a lot of places, but the aesthetics of our home has never really been one of those…. Anyway, he dutifully relented.

I knew from experience that it’s so much easier to get up on a weekend morning and paint a room if the prep is done in advance — ie any caulking, hole-filling, and supply-purchasing. The prior weekend we had a wedding Saturday afternoon, so on Saturday morning I bought our painting supplies and then on Sunday I spend some time filling nail holes and caulking. I knew the location of our art would change given our new room configuration, so it did make sense to patch the current nail holes, and I’d skipped caulking when I painted the room the first time because I was a home-owning newbie and didn’t think about it. That was okay because with dark walls the seams weren’t so noticeable, but I knew that with white walls and trim every dark crack between them would show.

In terms of color, I went with the same white we have in the rest of our house (and that I totally stole from Naomi’s home palette): Benjamin Moore’s Chantilly Lace. It’s just a great white that is warm but still doesn’t read too yellow. I have to admit I’m not a devotee of any particular interior paint brand, I usually just get whatever Lowes or Home Depot seems to be selling that is quality but also affordable. For this room, I went with Behr, and got the formulation that is both low odor and zero VOC — I knew we’d be painting with the windows closed (because it was set to be 95 degrees out the following weekend) and I also wanted to sleep in the room that very same night, so I didn’t want the walls sending off toxic fumes.

All the prep meant that the following weekend on Saturday morning we were able to have a nice lazy morning with our coffee and breakfast, and around 11am get to work knowing that we’d still wrap up by the afternoon. It took us about 20 minutes to clear the room of smaller items and move the dresser and bed to the center of the room, and then we got started!

Sam did the rolling while I cut in around the ceiling, floor, windows, and doors. I hate taping because it takes time and I always get bleedthrough anyway, so I just use an angled brush and free-hand it.

Here it is after the first coat:

Don’t mind the pile of clothes on the bed…those are a bunch of athletic clothes that we hang on a metal rack on the back of our door, which we took down to paint. It’s less messy than it appears….

My patient and wonderful husband:

Of course as usual we ran out of paint. I always try to get away with one gallon, and we always fall short by just a little bit. Once it became obvious we were going to run out (about halfway through Sam’s second trip around the room), I went out and got us more. Yet another reason why it’s nice to just use the same color in all the rooms in the house: having most of a gallon leftover isn’t actually a huge waste.

We ended up doing two coats on the walls with a few touch-ups, and then 3 coats on the trim (because the coverage is always a little lighter where I hand brush). With white paint it’s always hard to tell if the coverage is full enough until it’s all 100% dried — while it’s still drying, it can look really patchy.

Once it dried, though, we felt good. We put the bed and dresser back, though didn’t push them all the way against the wall since in the current humidity we’re having I think it will be a few days before everything fully cures. We still haven’t put back anything else that touches the walls, as I want to give it maximum time to avoid anything rubbing the fresh paint away. Still, I think it’s looking pretty good!

I love how the quilt looks against the clean white walls, and I think with some careful accessorizing the space is going to look really nice. It will never be easy to photograph because it’s so small (I’m standing in the doorway to take the above photo), but in person it feels a lot more open.

I put my lower nightstand back on Sam’s side of the bed, and then for my side I think I need something low and potentially open (more like a stool than a table) since it’s in front of the radiator. I love the natural tones of our headboard but don’t like the rounded edges, but getting a new bed is not part of the plan (or budget) right now.

Here’s the super organized other side of the room, which is what will become the closet:

Not gonna lie, I got a little lazy with the caulking around the trim and crown back there because it will be virtually impossible to see once we build the closet….

I hung the privacy sheers back up (since that’s how we maintain our modesty in our first floor bedroom), but I’m thinking I want white curtain panels now instead of putting the gray ones back up.

Anyway, that’s the current state of the bedroom! As a reminder, here’s how it looked the first week we moved in:

And then how it looked for about 3.5 years after our first makeover of it:

And now, en route to a new look: