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Home Decorating

Paint Selection and Color Flow

7 years ago

Hi all!

My contractor is about to start painting the second floor of our 1905 house that is being renovated. Boy, picking colors is hard!

Here's what I've come up with:

Flooring in the halls and bedrooms will be 4" red oak stained medium brown with white trim:

The master suite will be in blues. I'm planning to get a beige and blue Persian rug and upholstered bed in beige.

The master bathroom will be Carrara floors with white subway. I want to get this kind of vibe:

The hall bath will be white tile with black accents similar to this:

The hallway and stairs are a beige color that will continue from the first floor. The first floor (not shown) will be open. I'm planning to use a red and blue Persian rug with beige walls and upholstered furniture.

I just continued the same beige color up the stairs and hallway on the second floor because I wasn't sure if I should transition or how to do it.

So, that's what I'm thinking in terms of color. What do you all think?

Is it too beige? I like the current gray trend but I'm not sure if I could live with it. I like warmer colors and I don't think a lot of white walls and upholstery would work with young kids.
Do the colors flow or clash?
Are the colors too dark or too light? Should they be more grayed down?
Will the Master Bedroom be too dark.
I'm a bit lost on the kids room and just picked pink for a girl and blue for a boy. My daughter is only 1. My son is almost 4 and really likes Cars, Transformers, Batman, etc. He'll probably end up with a lot of that kind of action hero stuff in his room, and I'm not really sure how it will look with the blue color. I don't really want to pick a bright primary color, maybe it should be more neutral?
Should I pick a different color for the second floor hall than what I have for the open first floor?

I'd really appreciate any and all feedback!

Thanks!

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Comments (3)

Rory (Zone 6b)
7 years ago
I think the colors look wonderful together and your inspirations are lovely. I have had that last picture saved in my Houzz idea book for at least a year - I love it!
Jane
7 years ago
I think you are close. I would go to a paint consultant to pick the final colors. If it were me, I'd go lighter on the beige, pink and gold. But I like light and cool colors. Be really careful on the pink and gold - those can get tricky and have a strong effect on how you feel and they can remind you of things....

Paint colors will intensify with lighting and reflection from adjacent walls. That is where a paint consultant can help - they know which colors people tend to be happier with and how the colors behave in different lighting. When you have picked all the colors, you can fan out the paint samples and see how well they all work together throughout the home. You can have quite a rainbow of colors and they all can still work together. It has more to do with saturation and lightness than hue sometimes.

Also you can pick different but similar colors for different walls. My open space is painted greige on some walls and ivory (yellow tone) on others, but sometimes both of those colors look like the same color. I did this because I liked the contrast of the greige with the white (it's darker) but I didn't want to be surrounded by gray. The yellow tone makes me happy. So I picked which wall would have which color, based how I I lived in the rooms and what other surfaces were next to the paint.
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I've used a lot of yellow/gold and darker tan colors in my home. Not Ben Moore, however. The only caution I would give you is to be sure that the tan and beiges you use have some warmth to them. There's nothing worse than a yellow next to a pinky beige.
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You might want to check out a series of threads on using design seeds....it might help you with a color scheme and how to pull colors through open spaces so they coordinate...lots of ideas there...maybe something will strike your fancy. Here is a link that might be useful: using design seeds
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For a light creamy yellow, I love SW Ivoire. Many like Blonde which is on the same strip as Ivoire, but one shade darker, but I am not a big fan of Blonde-too gold for my liking. I much prefer Whole Wheat which leans more toward camel than gold. Another favorite SW color is Comfort Gray. I just love that shade. Whole Wheat and Comfort Gray are the main colors in my house. A "sleeper" SW color that looks great with orangey oaks and cherry is Austere Gray. Looks like a gorgeous soft green in sunlight, but at night looks more gray. Very understated and relaxing. Kind of like Comfort Gray, but it doesn't have the hint of blue that Comfort Gray has. I've read that Austere Gray and Grassland (another popular SW color) have the same tints except Austere Gray does not have yellow in it and Grassland does. If you want a good neutral "greige" without golds/yellows, Relaxed Khaki is a good choice. Maybe your husband would like that one. Some people paint different rooms off the same color strip, using darker shades in rooms that get a lot of light and lighter shades in darker rooms. That creates a nice flow. If your rooms are separate from one another, you can more easily go with different colors, but if you have an open floor plan where you can clearly see several rooms at a time, then color flow is important. Most SW stores have an in house color consultant. If you have time, call your local store and see when the consultant is in. Let them know what you're considering and see if they can help you. The consultant at my local store is terrific that way. You can describe a room or a look you're aiming for and she'll give you several possibilities to consider right off the top of her head. I always get those SW Color to Go samples (about $7 each_ of a few colors I'm interested in and paint a foam board. I set the board out and see what it looks like in different light. That's really helpful.
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Many Benjamin Moore dealers have a decorator who can help you choose paint colors to flow in your house and will help choose for the light in different rooms. Check with your BM dealer.
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junco East Georgia zone 8a
7 years ago
I really like all your selections but I agree with Jane that you need to be careful about what the colors will look like in your actual home with your light, etc.

The walls in your master bath inspiration picture look more like one of the BM Healing Aloe type colors--you might consider one of those. It could still be very nice with the darker blue, which I like a lot but again you need to test it in your space.

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