Sara Van Arsdale - Let’s say you’ve decided to finally do something about that troublesome room in your home. You know, the guest room you’re trying to create from your college kid’s bedroom, or the study that’s been ignored far too long. Or you’ve just moved to a new place, and you want a fresh start with a fresh look. Often, the place to begin with any major decorating project is with painting the walls.
And that’s the thought that makes many people shrink back in fear: hang a few large pictures on the wall and hope that the world ends before anything needs to be done about it.
We have this response for good reason. For many people, choosing paint color is a huge commitment, and painting an entire room - whether you do it your self or hire a professional - can be an expensive prospect. So you don’t want to choose a color and then, when the furniture is all in, realize that it was a hideous choice.
(A Hideous Choice )
That happened to me, once. No, actually it happened twice, which makes it even more embarrassing to admit. And both times, (both times! O dear Reader, how I cringe to admit this!) it happened with pink and blue. Both times, I thought I was painting one room a pale near-white with just a hint of pellucid robin’s egg blue, and the other would be a pale near-white with just a blush of rose, like an evening sky in late summer.
In the first case, I did the painting myself, and I ended up with a place that looked like I was preparing for twins, a baby girl and a baby boy. (I was not, at the time, with child.) All I needed were some cut-outs of fluffy lambies for the walls and a couple of bassinettes.
The second time it happened, I hired a painter, a great guy who grew up in Jamaica (the island nation, not the neighborhood in Queens). I left for the days he painted, and when I came back, he said, a bit dubiously, “It reminds me of my country.” And indeed, it looked all pink sand and clear blue waters - lovely, but not really what I’d had in mind. This time, all I needed was a tiki bar and a snorkeling outfit.
The most important thing I learned from these experiences was that wall color always looks less strong, less intense on the swatch than it does on the wall. Once you paint an entire wall any color, that color takes possession of the room. Paint all four walls that color, and you create a little bubble of color - which is great, if you love the color. But the color reflects back on itself, multiplying its strength, and that’s something that’s hard to imagine when you’re looking at a tiny one-inch swatch.
The second thing to keep in mind is