Paint Colors: How Hard Can It Be?

I’ve always had a great fear of putting color on the walls of my home, always opting for the safe route, which meant some version of white. Yeah, I’m chicken. Whether it’s Behr’s Navajo White No. 1422 or Benjamin Moore’s Antique White, just give me white and I can rest easy with the thought that if I move, we will have safe colors with which to sell the house. This is me, as opposed to my co-worker, who goes more boldly into messing with colors. Ooh, baby!

So when my mother-in-law — an artist — paid us a visit from NYC a couple of months ago, we talked about the walls and colors and wouldn’t it be fun if… Well, one thing I learned is that if I give my MIL an opening to "try it," she will .  Thank God she’s good!

As you can see in the photos above, we picked "Clay.03", a deep burnt orange color from Yolo Colorhouse – an environmentally friendly product that is zero VOC, which means it doesn’t have any stinky paint smell. The only other upgrade we did was to get new chairs for the dining room table which we picked up during a great sale at Pier One. The color on the walls really helped the rug colors pop, too. It was an amazing transformation and makes the room feel so rich.

We didn’t stop at the dining room. We also painted the living room a deep, forest green and the master bedroom a deep red. (I will add a future post with photos on these two rooms). Believe me, when these colors were "floated" for my approval, I felt a ton of anxiety. Dark green? Red in the bedroom? Red?? (Welcome to someone’s womb, is all I could think). But, my MIL convinced me it "will work." The rooms were eventually painted, the colors look fantastic and we’re getting compliments galore — especially from people who have the same anxiety I did about colors. My chicken days are over. Take the leap, I say. There’s always primer, if things go really wrong!