Sophisticated Pink Paint Color Suggesions?
Any suggestions for a sophisticated pink paint color for a basement guest bedroom? The only natural light in the room will be from a window that faces east. I don't want baby girl pink, but rather something that feels cozy and sophisticated.
The predominant furniture that will be in the room (bed, dresser, and side table/music stand) is painted a green color with gold on the edges and flowers. It comes from my husband's great grandmother and it is pretty, just not a style or color I'd pick out, so it's a little more challenging to decorate around for me. I found a rug on eBay that has a lot of subdued pink/peach tones (along with a lot of green and some indigo) that I think will work well with the furniture, and am trying to find a pink paint for the walls that looks nice with the rug and the furniture. I don't necessarily want to match the paint to the rug, just to find something harmonious.
Here's an inspiration picture that I love, though I have no idea what the wall color is. I'm looking for a slightly peachier pink than this to coordinate with the rug that will be in the room, but love the saturation of the pink in this photo.
Being in a basement, I thought I would need to find something with a fairly high LRV and that it would look more saturated just by virtue of not getting much natural light. I first tried SW "Intimate White" and it looks very washed out and baby-girl-room pink. I then tried BM Pristine and BM Old Country. Pristine is pretty and sophisticated, but still lighter than I'd like. Old Country, which seemed like it would just be a more saturated version of Pristine, looks like an ugly brownish-beige band-aid color-- it doesn't read pink at all in the room. I have a large sample paper of BM Queen Anne Pink so I tried that in there too, but it's a little too bright and peachy. I had no idea how hard it would be to find the right pink!
After obsessively looking for pink paint advice/inspiration on this forum and elsewhere online last night, I'm planning to pick up a sample of Odessa Pink HC-59 and one of Coastal Cottage 1169 (both Ben Moore colors) so I will try those tonight. Just curious if anyone has any other suggestions for pinks to try to get the effect I'm looking for. I've seen many suggestions for BM Opal, but I think that will also be too light. Here are a few pictures of the rug and furniture in case that helps.
I have a preference for Ben Moore paint colors because I love the size (and price) of their test pots, but am willing to try other brands if I can't find a Ben Moore color that works. Thank you!
Comments (22)
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Comments (49)I'm very late to the opinion party here, but I just wanted to point out that I think it's wonderful to partner with our children on decorating their rooms. Letting them experiment with color, helping them with furniture placement and other design elements ... I think essentially it's really helping to develop the inner decorator in each of them! Think how many adults are afraid to paint anything other than white -- would life be different if their moms & dads had encouraged color exploration in their own homes and rooms? Last year, before loading some gorgeous Art Deco furniture we bought off Craigslist into our then 10-y.o. daughter's room, I talked to her about how the yellow that was on the walls (which she chose) just didn't work with the light bird's eye maple furniture. (Truly, it was going to be a terrible combo). We talked about potential colors and we went to the paint store. She went straight to BM French Lilac as her one and only choice. I, of course, picked out several other paint chips for variety and home we went. Well, we ended up with her first, instinctive choice and the room is just gorgeous. It better be, because that furniture is never going anywhere. Heavy doesn't even begin to describe it! LOL Anyway, I love that my daughter loves her room, and that she chose the paint. I never had that chance when I was a kid!...See Moreneed a really nice pale shabby chic pink color
Comments (11)Funcolors a slight side track- who cuts the paint by 50%? HD? or does the consumer need to buy a second gallon and mix it 50-50 themselves.? and is the old numbered MS pink paint available at HD? or just ask for them to mix by number? The ballet pink sound wonderful I ahve long loved the color of ballet slippers! Well, as several emails have reminded me today !!! I usually frown upon cutting formulas. I just recorded a "Burst of Color" mini-podcast in which I said don't cut formulas. Apparently that was not lost on a the listeners who also read here. :) So, to clarify... some paint colors do 'cut' more gracefully and predictably than others. Slipper from SW is one of those colors. If you cut it yourself using white, you have to take into consideration the "color" of the white you are using. What colorants are in THAT can of paint to make it THAT white -- and how will those colorants affect the can of Slipper? Can try it with a small amount first, but to do that you're committed to buying quantity unless you want to try with samples - a lot of unpredictability comes with this choice. Plus, you have to figure out how much paint you need for the project. Mixing two gallons together is not a big deal -- unless one gallon is all that's need for the entire project. Ending up with a whole gallon left over is not a good thing. So, Slipper from Sherwin Williams is probably best 'cut' in terms of formula/colorant at the paint store. Ballet Slipper Pink from the Home Depot is #MSL033. Slipper from SW is #8358. Home Depot could probably mix #8358 and cut it. In general it's an easy color and I would think HD could handle it....See Morecolor gurus - suggest a pink for this tile?
Comments (9)I struggled with pinkish/grayish tile in my last house and just couldn't bring myself to paint the walls pink. My intention was to go with a very strong pink or terra cotta to skew the tiles toward gray. But in the end, I used BM Gray Horse and was happy with the result. Tiles were still pink :-) but the gray was more sophisticated to my eye and it was easier to narrow down the choices amongst the grays. What I think is important here is that you don't feel restricted to "matching" the pink in the tile. Often times, people will pick a color from a bedspread and put it on the walls because it matches. Nevermind it is a lousy color for walls! Especially because you have the wainscoting separating the two pinks, they need not be identical...merely related. It is more important that you pick a color that actually works and pleases you for the walls. Your brain will "make up the difference." I also would want to see you choose something that plays nicely with the room/s beyond. That color relationship is even more important than the floor/wall relationship, IMO. Do you have a plan for that room yet? Beware the pinky-beige-looking-like-a-bandaid problem. The first house I ever painted, about twenty years ago, ended up looking like bandaids! Live and learn. If you have Ben Moore fandecks, I suggest looking at the lightest colors on the brown strips in the middle of the decks. Things like Woodland Snow and Winter Sky, or Onyx White and Gentle Repose. Don't let the fact that the are on the brown strips fool you. In the right surroundings, these will read pink. They are pink! (Do buy a test quart before committing so that you don't end up with Band Aid!) This is a trap you know....you think you ned to look at the pink strips to find pink paint. That's when you wander into Pepto Bismol territory! :-) One last thought is to take a peek at the F&B pinks. They are very unusual and complex pinks. Rich but never Pepto. Any of those might be an interesting choice, depending on what's going in the other rooms. Good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: Dead Salmon anyone?...See MoreToo much gray? Depressing or sophisticated?
Comments (25)Grey is a very reflective color so it changes with the light in the room, It can go warm or cool depending upon the amount of natural light and can also create a shadowed feeling. I use a lot of grey personally, but some people do find it affects their mood on cloudy days. Very sophisticated in the right space and in the hands of an expert who can watch and correct the shades throughout the day and even through warmer sunnier months and cooler rainier months when the color will change dramatically.If I were in the process of doing a beach property, I'd avoid all beachey themed decorating options and turn to the colors and look of the Restoration Hardware palette for sophisticated casual elegance. Check out the colors online and do look at the towels for their graduated colors too. The sunny sandy ivories, subtle greyed seaglass blues and greens, driftwood and beachgrass cocoas all blend and compliment each other and will create a seamless look when moving from one room to another and when seeing one room from another too. Choose a silver sage with a creamy ivory trim in one room and then move on to an ivory room where there is less light and more brightness needed and accent with silver sage and cocoa. Choose three colors you love and use them in all the rooms in different applications and you'll love the clean sophisticated pulled together look. Punch up the serene colors with bright sunny accessory pillows on neutral linen upholstery and add some sparkle and shine with mercury glass, that has that subtle gold and silver distressed finish. Large inexpensive clear vases from pier 1 or world market filled with fresh flowers that are anchored in tumbled stones (buy them by the bag) add another pop of color, fragrance and a natural element for not much money. Add large mirrors to reflect light and your beautiful view. Colorful oversized artwork and photography will also add personalization, punctuation and color to the spaces. Simple squared wood gallery framing is the way to go with artwork, no gold, silver or ornate carving, and groupings would be very dramatic especially if spotlighted from a directional ceiling spot. Keep things clean and uncluttered and the lighting adjustable from bright to dim with white or ivory linen shades. Window treatments should be simple, solid, natural fabrics like a linen scrim and not obstructive to your views in any way. If budget permits, stain the oak floors a deeper brown, or go with a newly popular bleached, pickled finish. Watch the colors outside your windows too for inspiration. Most people forget that windows are the "other" walls in the room and the colors you see outside are the colors you're also incorporating into your color scheme. Hope this helps in some way....See More
PROJudyG Designs
4 years agoI think a pale pink in a basement room with one window getting the fleeting light from the east won’t work. Most of the time you will have to turn lights on and the pale pink will look washed out and gray.
Find the pink you love and then go darker on the strip.
eastautumn thanked JudyG Designseastautumn
4 years agoThank you all for the suggestions and also the encouragement! I’ve been thinking about this room for years, since my in-laws down sized and the furniture has been stored in our unfinished basement. Our kids are pre-teens now and it’s gotten harder to shift people around when guests come to visit, so it’s definitely time for an official guest room.
Thanks for the compliments on the rug! If not for reading posts on this forum for years (dating back to the GardenWeb days) and gleaning all kinds of useful tips, I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to purchase a rug through eBay, but I’ve purchased 3 antique/semi-antique rugs from eBay sellers over the years and at amazing prices! I was SO excited to see this one a couple of months ago, and really hoped it would help me finally choose a wall color in time for the painting phase.
Thank you to chicagoans for the suggestion to look for “blush” colors; that’s exactly what I want! Not peach, not pink, but that sweet spot right in between. The inspiration pictures of Malted Milk and Ella Rose look gorgeous! I’m planning to check out those paint chips, though I fear they may go beige in the room as other similar colors have done. And JudyG, you’re absolutely right about the pale colors just washing out and graying (or “beige-ing”) in the low light.
I’ve never had to choose paint colors for a basement before but thought I’d done my research enough to know how to account for the unique light conditions. The answer is definitely not to go lighter (unless of course you’re looking for light and bright), but to up the saturation a little and decrease the gray/beige tint. I tend toward the historic color palettes that are more subdued, but they’re just not working in my basement light conditions. I tried Odessa Pink, Coastal Cottage, and Queen Anne samples on all 4 walls last night, and none of them are quite right, but they’re helping me figure out which direction to go. Odessa and Coastal Cottage are both too beige and a little too dark in there, and Queen Anne is the right saturation (so now I know I’m looking for about a 72 LRV), but it looks straight up peach (not blush). I have long swooned over this inspiration picture as well, which is Odessa Pink. If only it would behave like this in my basement!
Arlosmom, I found a picture of Wild Aster online (from Making It Lovely) that looks like what I’m looking for, but in my light the Wild Aster paint chip on my fan deck looks purple-pink rather than blush… Nothing like the inspiration picture. Argh.
I’m snowed in today so can’t get out for more paint chips or samples. I want to get my hands on a Champagne Glee paint chip from Valspar and compare it to Queen Anne to see if it could be “the one” as it was for this blogger (though her light conditions are not like mine so I’m trying not to get my hopes up).
Tissue Pink gets all kinds of love from designers, and it’s the exact LRV I’m looking for, but I’m hesitating because it’s on the same strip in my fan deck (just one notch lighter) as the Coastal Cottage that went too beige on me… Maybe that doesn’t matter though. It’s definitely pinker than Queen Anne and is the same LRV, so I should probably give it a try. Hopefully the snow will stop and I can venture out tomorrow. The good news is the painters couldn’t make it today in the snow, so they couldn’t finish prepping... That should give me a little more time to obsess over blush paints.eastautumn
4 years agoeastautumn
4 years agoQueen Anne Pink looks a lot like this (unidentified) peach color. It's pretty and is growing on me as a possibility (definitely the front runner of those I've tried), but I still want to try for something that reads more blush. But thought I'd add the picture for a little eye candy.
Cambridge Residence · More Infoeastautumn
2 years agoeastautumn
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoI finally got a chance to take some pictures yesterday! It's next to impossible to get photos that accurately reflect the wall color due to the lack of natural light in this room, but with the lights on you can get a pretty good idea.
This is Tissue Pink (Ben Moore 1163) in a basement bedroom with a window that faces east.
Thank you again to all of you who chimed in with suggestions and tips!
Bunny