Figuring Out A Whole-House Paint Palette: a house log

Paint can fairly much be chalked up to a learning experience around Casa Petersik. From painting all of our home’s trim with flat paint right after we moved in (baaad idea, use semi-gloss!) to picking a distinct color of the rainbow for each room (not the way to make a small house flow!) we have fairly much made every mistake in the book. And over the last nearly-four years our walls have certainly “evolved” as we learned what we liked (and a whole lot of what we did not).

We chose to use a handy little floor plan (created thanks to Floorplanner) to demonstrate three “stages” of our home’s ever changing color scheme to show that homes do not typically “magically come together” overnight. Sometimes it takes some experimentation and a bit of repainting (and repainting again) to get ‘er done. But with every little change that you make you will be inching towards the home of your dreams- and simply like the right dress can theoretically make you look slimmer and bring out your eyes, the right wall color truly can turn any house into a dream home (all for about $30 a room and an afternoon of your time).

Here is what we meant when we mentioned that we picked nearly every color in the rainbow for our house’s original color scheme right after we moved in…

Color Scheme: THEN

From an orangy-yellow in the den to an easter-egg-ish pastel green for the living room, our choices truly ran the gamut. And we even went with a bright robin’s egg blue for the third bedroom (which was formerly the dining room) and the half bath. Of course looking back those were odd choices for two of the smallest rooms in our house. In short: when this color scheme was in effect, it felt like you were entering a distinct house every time you stepped into a distinct room instead of feeling like there was an overall cohesion and flow to our modestly sized ranch home.

The funny thing is that the only color that we chose to use twice was the bold turquoise color in the 3rd bedroom and the 1/2 bath. Now we understand that in a small house you want continuity and rooms that feel like they flow- and not like they are chopped up with distinct color schemes- so we routinely repeat colors or slide a shade or two darker or lighter to keep things feeling related throughout our whole home’s floor plan. Then we chose to repeat the soft blue-gray bedroom color in the kitchen while keeping the rest of the house subdued and neutral, and stood back and admired how the creams, sandy tans, and soft gray-blues worked together to create spaces that felt varied and interesting without evoking that chaotic and unrelated vibe.

Color Scheme: MIDPOINT

Only our bedroom and the sunroom escaped the repainting spree that took us from the “then” paint color breakdown to this “midpoint” diagram above. And while it may not look exciting on screen – it totally made the house feel bigger, more connected and a lot more grown up. What we had done was accomplish a more toned down and agreeable whole house palette, but we still ached for something a bit more interesting and textural (nothing too high contrast, but simply a few unexpected paint color applications to keep things feeling fresh) so we did a few things to take our house from serene and soft to serene and soft… with a bit of a twist.

Color Scheme: NOW

It was not anything too major, but we certainly made a few noteworthy and lively little tweaks none the less (and the few changes that we are about to list earn us BY FAR the most paint color compliments, so it truly does pay to go that extra mile):

1. We painted the ceiling of our blue-gray bedroom a softer more subtle blue-green tone to create a dreamy ambiance that far surpasses the magic of a white ceiling. Read more about this project here.

2. We brought in playful tone on tone horizontal stripes to the half bathroom in a few hours one evening (for under five dollars). Best time and money we ever spent. Read more about this project here.

3. We took the full bathroom from the same color as the living room and guest bedroom to a soft khaki green color (since they were all in such close proximity this brought in a pleasant varied feeling to a layout that was feeling a bit tan on tan on tan before). And we even carried the same wall color right up onto the ceiling for a seamless effect. Read more about this project here.

4. We chose a cheerful pear color for the walls of the newly created nursery and brought in a splash of soft aqua on the ceiling (the blue ceiling tied into our bedroom and the kitchen while the green walls related to the nearby khaki green bathroom and a slew of green accessories throughout the house). Read more about this project here (and see additional photos here and here).

And we are not done yet. Homeownership is an ever evolving process, I tell ya. Next on the agenda: nixing our white ceilings. We know they’ll feel higher and a lot less stark and jarring when they are better integrated into our home’s palette. In fact, we are planning to paint nearly every single one in either a lighter tone of the wall color (they’ll still feel lifted but not quite as stark), the same exact hue as the walls (if the walls are light sufficient this truly blurs the bounds of the room and makes it feel a lot more expansive), or even a contrasting or complementary color (we have consistently hoped to paint our tan sunroom’s ceiling sky blue).

So that is where we are at the present time when it comes to our home’s state of paint affairs. And since we know you folks enjoy all the dirty details, here is a swift rundown of our casa’s current colors:

• Our Bedroom: Glidden’s Gentle Tide (walls) and Glidden’s Cool Cucumber (ceiling)
• Second Bedroom: Glidden’s Sand White
• Full Bathroom: Benjamin Moore’s Dune Grass (color matched to Olympic’s Premium No-VOC paint)
• Nursery: Mythic’s Autumn Bloom (walls) and Mythic’s Adanna Aire (ceiling)
• Living Room: Glidden’s Sand White
• Kitchen: Glidden’s Gentle Tide
• Den: Glidden’s Water Chestnut (fireplace accent wall) and Glidden’s Wishes (other three walls)
• Laundry Nook: Glidden’s Wishes
• Half Bathroom: Glidden’s Wishes (walls) and Valspar’s Honeymilk (stripes and ceiling)
• Sunroom: Glidden’s Water Chestnut
• All Trim & Interior Doors: Freshaire’s No-VOC stock white semi-gloss paint

Note: Some of the Glidden colors listed above are no longer available, but they can supposedly look up the formulas on the computer and whip them up for you. If not, Glidden’s Wishes is now called Eloquent Ivory (it is the same exact formula), Benjamin Moore’s Quiet Moments is quite similar to Glidden’s Gentle Tide and Benjamin Moore’s Ashen Tan is quite close to Glidden’s Sand White.

And why stop now when there are more things we can add bullets to? Here are few of the major paint discoveries that we made along the way. Here is hoping they assist you sleuth out the ideal color palette for your casa:

• Never select a color without checking it out in morning light, afternoon light and evening light- simply to be sure it does not mutate from serene to scary when the sun sets.
• Paint colors look fully distinct in distinct spaces, so do not blindly paint your room a color that you liked on the walls of Restoration Hardware since their lighting sitch is nothing like yours. Instead bring home the paint chip, tape it up on your wall and check it out in your lighting at all times of the day.
• Consistently look at a paint swatch on the plane that it’ll be on (do not put it on a table and look at it horizontally if it’ll be on the wall- in fact tape it up on the wall and evaluate it there- the same goes for ceilings).

• Taping up a few paint chips at a time can assist you select the ideal shade (since you can compare them to one another, you can much more easily weed out anything that is “too yellow” or “too peachy” thanks to the other swatches beside it).
• We typically gravitate to the bottom two swatches of every paint chip (since our house is modestly sized we like how lighter tones and shades of each color make our house feel more airy and expansive).
• Neutrals can be written off as boring, but with crisp white trim and a range of furnishings, accessories, and textiles layered into the space they can be anything but.

• Repeating a color across the house is not weird- it is smart. Making your bedroom the same color as your entryway is a strong way to take your house “full circle” so things feel like they are part of a bigger picture. We use 80% of our home’s colors in at least two spaces (sometimes three) and the result is a pleasant layered and serene feeling.
• When you do not want to repeat the same exact color, sliding one tone lighter or darker on the paint swatch is a strong way to guarantee that rooms will feel related and airy (ex: go a shade lighter in your attached bathroom than you did in the bedroom for varied interest that still feels cohesive).
• There have to be colors that you consistently gravitate towards (in our case, green and blue) so using muddy and subtle variations of those tones along with a pleasant liberal dose of neutrals is a fairly foolproof formula.
• Keeping the flooring (ex: mocha hardwoods) or the trim (ex: crisp white) consistent in as much of your home as possible will truly assist to unify any home’s color scheme.

• Even smaller items- like a leafy green plant in each room- or similarly colored wall frames- ours are all white- can truly tie disparate rooms together for a pleasant straightforward flow.
• Do not forget that tan and beige are not the only neutrals! Cream is a vivid alternative for a hallway (especially if you have a bunch of rooms branching off of that space and want something unifying and not too bold) and there are many light platinum gray tones that are luxe and chic without being too dark and brooding.
• In general (although certainly not in all circumstances) we like accent walls that are subtle as opposed to jarring and high-contrast (since the later can break up a space and define the boundaries of it, thereby making it feel fractionalized and disturbing the straightforward flow).

So that does it for our yeah-we-make-mistakes-too-and-learn-as-we-go-and-repaint-rooms-a-few-times-to-get-things-right post. It certainly helps to remember that paint is the cheapest mistake you can make! So stop being paralyzed by indecision and simply dive in. If you pick the right color you will be over the moon, and even if it is wrong you will learn what you do not like so you are closer to scooping up the ideal shade… and you will only be out around $20-30 bucks. Glad painting to you and yours!

Update – Wanna know where we got something in our house or what paint colors we used? Simply click on this button: