Get your color on!

Sherwin Williams Biltmore Buff worked wonders in the kitchen

While the painters were dealing with our wallpaper nightmare, I needed to quick choose a color scheme.  I got books and magazines from the library, searched the 'net and ended up with so much information and choices I sort of froze.  Blankly staring at the selection of whites at the paint store was downright frightening. 

Sherwin Williams Cupola Yellow: warm and rich

Our previous home had off-white walls throughout and I wanted to try color, but I was completely intimidated.  It took me a really long time to pick colors.  The staff at our local Sherwin Williams store were quite helpful and so was our painter.  The one saleslady said that if you hold two colors up together the one shouldn't overpower the other.  I found it pretty hard to tell if colors were similiarly saturated, to be honest, but in the end I figured out a color scheme, sort-of. 

The main rooms and corridors of the house are warm creams and golds, which is sort of funny 'cuz I don't actually like yellows very much but I like what we went with.  The bedrooms and bathrooms are greens and blues.

One of the kids is a rainbow fanatic-I painted this myself

We made some mistakes though.  We shouldn't have listened to all that "these are the trends now" stuff.  Instead of opting for semi-gloss, or at least a satin, we went with flat paint in the living room, hallways and kitchen.  We had been told that people preferred the flat look.  Big mistake.  We've got kids and pets so within the year, the walls showed more dirt and stains than I ever imagined possible.  (Of course, we are probably rougher on our domicile than the average owners...I found child-sized footprints 5' up on the hallway walls.  Don't ask me how; I don't know.) 
The painters did the majority of the rooms but since the kids wanted multiple colors on their walls I did the bedrooms myself.  It saved us money and the kids really liked their fancy walls. 

Thank goodness we didn't listen when everyone told us to go with one of the "in" wall textures.  We opted for the sand, which is relatively easy to re-texture if you have holes in the walls.  Since we've painted, there's been a few.  I guess that's why people do their electrical work first before painting.  Oh well, live and learn...

The original white walls made the fireplace look garish

Didn't think I would but I LOVE this color!

The two toughest rooms were the den and the kid's bathroom.  The den has a fieldstone fireplace with a lot of pink and orange in it; not very attractive.  I wanted to mute that awful combo and went with a grayed-out green.  I think it turned out pretty nice. 

The kid's bathroom had blue fixtures of various hues and a white laminate counter.  Remodeling the bathrooms is way down on our list of priorities so I had to get a color that would tone down the bright blue toilet and tub and dark blue tile.  With the support of our painter, I decided to try a CRAZY shade of lime green (SW6703 Frolic) that turned out absolutely perfect!  I love it; it actually makes me feel happy when I look at it.