Painting The Ceiling Pink In The Daughter’s Room

We did it! We can put three big ol’ check marks next to “paint the walls” and “paint the closet” and “paint the ceiling” in Clara’s room. It was certainly a bit of a painting marathon, but how sweet is the soft pink up there on the ceiling? It is Pink Cadillac by Benjamin Moore in their eggshell finish. In some of these photos it is fairly subtle, but in person it is soft-but-noticeable – so while it is not the whole room’s focal point, it is a lively layered detail in the room. We thought clean white walls would complement the lively ceiling color without fighting too much with all of the color and pattern in things like the rug/pillows/curtains, so we went with BM Simply White in eggshell, which is also what we use for trim and doors in a glossier finish. Here are some other popular whites for walls and trim.

We also used some leftover ceiling paint in the closet, simply to add something in there too. Someday I want to add a built-in bench in there and I even think about doing something interesting to the slanted ceiling (little cedar roofing shakes could bring out that “indoor playhouse” vibe – and perhaps even some playful wallpaper on the back wall could be lively).

Oh and you will notice that the rug and the curtains from the living room have migrated up here. Clara’s pink rug was shedding like a maniac (the new hardwoods made the giant pink tumbleweeds especially noticeable) and Clara loves playing on this blue rug (she pretends the light blue parts are the ocean for her toys/dolls) so we rolled it out up here to see how we liked it. When we plopped everything down after moving we figured a bunch of things would find their way around the house, so it is lively to see things making the rounds, and now this woven rug is in the living room – although the jury’s still out on whether we like it there for the long haul.

But let us rewind to the room all prepped (we moved everything into the center and covered it with a few plastic dropcloths). Remember those old stripey walls from spraying the doors before we installed the hardwood floors? Well, we chose we did not want that primer/paint “flashing” (meaning that it could show through the paint if we did not prime) so we took a minute to prime simply the areas that we worried about that happening.

Here is that area all primed along with the ceiling painted (we painted the ceiling first, then moved on to priming simply select areas of the walls where we worried about bleed or flashing).

Then we broke out the white paint for the walls. I grabbed this shot so you can see the difference between the yellowed old wall paint, the cooler toned primer, and the Simply White wall color.

Of course we are still missing a bunch of things on the wall, like something I am halfway through sewing for over Clara’s bed (COUGHcanopyCOUGH) so I cannot wait to get that done and hung – along with some other art and eventually a light fixture that we’d enjoy to add too. But it is already a large improvement not to have the old yellowed walls and to at last be rid of those stripes from spraying the doors! And it is certainly a far cry from the room full of blue trim that we began with:

We have also been trying to work on our photography skillz (picture us both laughing and blushing as we say that since we have such a long way to go) but we shot all of these after photos in manual for the first time! They are certainly not ideal, but we are slowly getting the hang of it… I think.

Clara is in love with her pink ceiling. When she came in and saw it she said “now when I am sleeping I can look at the pink and the pink can look at me.”

I enjoy that it is a balance of crazy and calm in here, thanks to the lively mix of patterns (in the pillows, curtains, and the rug) combined with the white furniture and the white walls to sort of temper things so the room is not too wacky.

Here is a shot from the closet, looking back at the other side of the room. That wall above the crib certainly needs some art, although Clara seems close to being done with her crib so we might simply wait until she’s outta there to move it out of the room and then decide what will live on that wall, which will certainly inform the art above it.

Ooh look, I focused on the book and blurred the alligator. I feel like I should make myself a construction crown that says “Photoshoot Skillz In Da House” … and then promptly crumble it up after checking out my other go-to blogs, which all have infinitely better photos.

This cute kid makes any picture better though, so big ups to my girl for making this shot.

Oh and if you look closely you will see that we did not quite get into all the cracks where the wall meets the ceiling since we are planning to add some crown molding – hopefully fairly soon!

What are you folks painting? Any clean walls + playful ceilings going on?