Choosing color is one of the most deceiving exercise I have to undertake for this project. What you see on a swatch has little bearing on how it's going to look in a room; or worse, how it's going to look on a house. Size does matter. It's all about relation with the surrounding, the effect of the color next to each other, lighting in the house, size of the wall, ceiling, siding, beams.
I have many paintings and since I'm already convinced that there is way too much "wood" in the kitchen, the only natural color selection is white. So great, let's look at white, how about over 200 selections just from one brand. Well, at least I have decided to go with Benjamin Moore. Seems like all architects and designers favor this brand. I'm just glad at least one element is fixed. So what to do with the overwhelming selection of white? Pure white, white with a gray tint, blue tint, yellow tint, warm white, cold white... All I can say is my brain gone white. So I started looking at color names. Cotton balls, snow angels, deep in thought, baby's breadth. I'm so tempted to go with a color with a good name that I like, but seriously, that shouldn't be a criteria. So after days of contemplation, consulting with architect and Mr. Color, and including frequent hang out in the paint store and Orchard Supply Hardware, I have decided to go with 2 whites. One clean white for the ceiling to make it brighter and one warm white for the wall. I finally narrowed it down to Simply White, Super White, White and White Zinfandel for the ceiling. And Cotton Balls, Dune White and Cloud White for the wall. And after yet a couple of days of going back and forth, here are the winners: Super White and Dune White. Cotton Balls was a close second but the contrast is just too minimal to justify using 2 whites.
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| Whites (just for reference, not a good rendition of the real color....) |
To make things slightly more complicated, I want to have a light blue bedroom. I mentioned wanting to find a light blue tiles in some back postings and came out empty handed and had to settle for rustic grey limestones. This is another chance for me to get some blue into my room, an obsession I have for decades. Surprisingly finding this blue is easier than finding the white. From early on I settled for Intuition, Constellation, Heaven on Earth and Blue Stream They are light blue have a grayish tone of different shades. I was going to paint all the walls blue, but then I already ordered blue bedside lights which shouldn't be mounted on another blue wall. So I just ended up having 1 accent blue wall. Here are all the samples, and I did buy 2 of them to paint on the wall and ended up choosing the in between color. The winner is Heaven on Earth.
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| Blues (depending on your screen and lighting in your room, this probably doesn't even look blue ;-) |
The study is full of gray colored shelves and cabinets and I always found it too clinical and cold. So what's better than to add some sunshine into the room ? Yes, yellow, amarillo!! Well, of course like all other colors the amount of yellow is overwhelming, but just like blue, it's easier than white as I only want a warm yellow, and not too bright. This limits the selection to a more manageable size and the candidates are Solieil, Safari, Straw and Country Comfort. Again after sampling the lightest and the darkest, I went with the darkest this time. Country Comfort is the final choice.
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| Yellows |
So here are the selections:
The painters, Enrique, Julio and Juan did a very good job prepping the house that were full of holes, cracks, water damage, and all other issues. It took 2 of them more than 4 days to complete the prep. And another 2 days with all 3 of them to paint. The end result is superb. I have not seen my house in such nice condition.
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| Above the ledge is ceiling super white, below is the dune white. |
¡Muchas gracias a los pintores!
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