Again with the paint swatches. Lord help me.
I do this zillion-swatches-all-over-my-walls thing just about every time I paint nowadays (thanks in large part to my sister-in-law). So many things affect how a color will look on a wall, from surrounding colors to lighting to finish, and I want to see how a color looks in my space before I invest the time and money in putting it on the wall. It can be a little exhausting, but we've all been burned by a bad paint choice once or twice and I'm working hard to avoid that!
Well, it appears that I've already failed.
On their own, these two colors are divine. I love them both. I'm sure that you can see, however, that they don't look so hot when applied to adjacent walls, as in the photo above. They're too close yet not close enough, know what I mean? On the left is Valspar's Frappe, the freshly-painted color on our kitchen walls. On the right is Allen + Roth's Portland (also from Lowe's) at 25% strength, which is on most of our living/dining room walls...
...except for an "accent corner" in the living room. The light wall is Portland, the darker is City Chic from the Lowe's Creative Color line.
Our original plan was to take Portland through the entryway which is adjacent to our kitchen, as it is located in the front of the house. In the photo below, you can see a little strip of brown wood on the left - that's the end of a cabinetry panel enclosing our refrigerator. That should give you an idea of the floor plan - the entryway opens right into the kitchen. We just can't have those two colors that close to one another - Portland is out for the entryway.
Option #2 was to continue Frappe out of the kitchen and into the entryway. Well, that still leaves them up against one another at the other end of the entryway, which opens into the Portland-colored living/dining room. So, Frappe is also out for the entryway. We already have 3 different colors on our very open main level, and I really hesitate to introduce yet another new color. We tried a nice muted grey-blue, but it just made the Frappe look green...
It's really tough to see in this photo, but trust me. Green.
Purples actually "go" very nicely with the other two colors when you hold all the swatch cards together. However, you've seen in the photo above how tight our entry space is, so I'm trying to be very careful not to go too dark with the walls. I'm not sure if you've ever tried to look for a light purple that's not lavender, but trust me. It's tough. The search continues.
I'm considering being boring and just going bright white with it. Can't go wrong there, right? And white doesn't have to be boring - I could dress it up with some chic, vibrant wall decor. I'm also searching for a color that's a shade or two darker than Frappe, to increase the contrast with the Portland while still "going" with the Frappe, all while not going so dark as to further shrink our already small entryway.
With that, we're off to Sherwin Williams for inspiration (and paint samples!). I've already scoured the choices at Lowe's ad nauseum, and next will be Home Depot - SW is just closer ;-)
Oh, and while we're on the topic of home decor, can I just brag about our new area rug, on its way from RugsUSA to our humble abode as we speak...
We got a 6x9 (35% off, I might add) in eggplant purple for our living room. I'm beyond stoked.
I will be following this closely. In fact, I'm going to have to read it again to understand any of it. :-) LOVE the rug!!
ReplyDeletePerhaps some color, rather than another neutral??? And what is wrong with green, my designer daughter? Green is your mama's favorite color (as evidenced by the fact that my living room and bathroom are both green. :D ) Perhaps you could get really daring and do a stripe effect with the frappe - a line of flat and a line of satin finish or something like that, around the entryway, with perhaps a narrow band (like 1" wide) of the Portland (or eggplant!) spaced in every 5 or so stripes? Maybe 8 or 12 inch stripe panels? A papered effect without the paper....
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