Young House Love

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Those Times We Made Bad Painting Decisions

Once again it’s one of those weeks where we’ll all over the place. After stenciling the floor in our bath and closet, eking out some seasonal craftiness, and hanging extra thick crown in Clara’s room we’re now in the midst of sealing the stenciled floors, completing the canopy wall in Clara’s room, ripping up the old carpeting on our stairs, and not-so-patiently waiting to grout the sunroom tile floor as soon as things dry up out there (Mother Nature is playing a cruel joke on us with all of this rain). And in the middle of it all, we got this question that I thought would be interesting to think about. So here we go. Q: Do you two ever make painting mistakes? I feel like I’m always choosing the wrong color, or even worse, not picking anything at all because I’m so intimidated to make the wrong choice. After all these years of painting walls, trim, doors, ceilings, and even floors, do you have any tips for me? I’d love a roundup of paint mistakes you’ve made and what they taught you, mostly just to see if I can save myself from a similar fate! If you don’t have time to address this I understand, but I would really appreciate the help. And so would my walls :) – Marta F. A: Generally we like to think of ourselves as having an okay eye for picking paint colors. We usually go into things with a clear vision for what we want, can typically pick colors quickly and confidently (our typical method is to hold swatches up in the room we’ll be painting and observe them in different lighting situations), and we’ve been known to buy a few test pots whenever we can’t make a choice based solely on the swatches. But we’re certainly not immune to making bad calls when it comes to paint selection. And actually, those missteps have been great learning experiences. So thanks for the question, Marta. Here are…

YHL Top 5 Paint Color Screw Ups

#1 – The Amazing Technicolor Dream House. We’re starting with an oldie, but a goodie – our crazy colorful first attempt at a whole house color scheme. We chatted about it back in early 2010 here, and it has to be #1 on our list because it was such a giant mistake (as in, it affected nearly every room). Basically, we painted each space in our first house a different color that didn’t go with the next: tiffany blue here, mint green there, and, oh, let’s combine yellow and red brick in the next room #McDonalds #facepalm. It made the whole house look disconnected and chaotic, so we eventually course corrected and repainted nearly every room to give the house a more cohesive feeling. The good news is that our second pass at paint colors made sense together, and they made us so much happier. Wouldn’t you know it, our little home had a much easier flow when the rooms weren’t all fighting with each other and announcing their differences (“Now you’re in the light green room!” “Welcome to the bright blue room!” “Bienvenidos a the yellow and red room!) Bonus: the house felt at least 30% bigger. We love colorful houses, it’s just that a palette that flows is usually more successful than something random (when rooms clash with the ones next to them). For example, five colorful swatches that don’t go together might make a house feel choppy and compete-y, meanwhile five awesomely bold jewel toned swatches could be amazing (still fun, but they look good together). It’s hard to get walls right on the first try – especially in your first house. So don’t despair. Sometimes with painting, the second time’s the charm. LESSON LEARNED: Consider how paint colors will flow from room-to-room; and if it’s a small home or you’re at all worried about it feeling chopped up or chaotic, it doesn’t usually hurt to err on the side of fewer colors within your whole house palette (even if there are some bold ones in there, just make sure they mix well together to avoid that random rainbow effect).

Mispaint 1 First House

#2 – An Unappetizing Glow. One of most polarizing colors we’ve ever used was the grellow in our last kitchen. We lived with it for quite some time and still like it a lot as a color, but we ultimately deemed it the wrong choice for that kitchen. It was wrong for two reasons. For one, it was difficult to photograph accurately – but that’s not a problem most people have to worry about – and it’s not even a reason we would repaint an entire room (there was a whole lot of cutting in around those cabinets). The real reason for the change was the yellow-y hue that it cast on all of the white surfaces in the room. It made the cabinets and counters look cream – especially with the lights on. We typically prefer purer whites over tones like ivory or cream, so we repainted the room in a still-happy medium blue color to banish the yellow cast. Suddenly the counter, cabinets, and even the floor were a lot less yellow looking. It’s not super apparent in the counters and cabinets in the photo below (although the floor tone is noticeably different) but you can see it better in videos like this one. LESSON LEARNED: Consider how a paint color will affect other things in the room, especially when bold colors might cast their hue or reflect elsewhere (especially on glossy surfaces like counters and shiny floors for example).

Mispaint 2 Kitchen

#3 – Subtle Becomes Not-So-Subtle In Concentration. In general, it’s usually trickier to work with colors (bold or soft ones) over neutrals – but we love them. There does seem to be a formula for choosing them though. We typically have luck when we pick very desaturated versions of a color that we like on the swatch, often with a visible touch of gray or brown to them. So if we like the deep teal tone on one swatch, we’ll look for another swatch that looks like it’s that color, but muddier or grayer instead of quite as bold/pure. If we don’t do that, we find out that what looks good on a small swatch can actually read as a neon-crazypants-color (that’s a technical term) on the walls. Meanwhile, when you go for the more desaturated swatch that’s tempered with some gray or some brown as an undertone, it seems to read a lot stronger when it’s on the wall,  and we end up right where we hoped (not too muddy, but not too bright).

Dining Room Side

We knew we were breaking our own rule a bit when we selected a very pure, albeit very light, pink for Clara’s new bedroom ceiling. Unlike most colors we go for, it didn’t have a lot of gray or muddiness to the tone – it was just soft and pink, which we knew she would love, so we pressed on. We even did our usual first-step test to make sure we liked it (holding up the swatch on the surface we would be painting, since colors look different on different planes and we were going for the ceiling this time) and we viewed it in several lights before pulling the trigger. We love how the ceiling turned out, but our mistake was also painting her closet the same color on a whim. In the confined space, especially when it’s illuminated by her bright artificial closet light, that pink becomes waay more intense than we ever imagined (which we would have known if we observed the swatch in there too). It’s not that bad in the picture below because it’s in natural light, but in person it’s a bit much – especially when the light’s on. So it’s still a color mistake that we’d like to correct, but because Clara loves it we’re thinking it might remain on a wall or two in there (and we’ll add some other elements/colors to temper it). Sherry even dreams of cedar shake shingles on the slanted roof in there to make it feel like a playhouse, which could definitely help to tone down the pink. LESSON LEARNED: Don’t assume that a color that looks good in one room or on a certain surface will automatically look great in another, especially if the conditions (lighting, size, furnishings, etc) are different.

Mispaint 3 Claras Rom

#4 – Exteriors Are Counter-Intuitive. When we had the rotting siding repaired and repainted on our new house, it was actually the first time we were doing any major exterior paint color selection in seven years of homeownership. And you know what that means? At was a chance to make a huge mistake! Beyond our usual tricks of holding up swatches in multiple lights and against the plane to be painted, we had also heard that you generally should go darker with exteriors since the light hits them so strongly outside. But we still didn’t want to go so dark that the house looked gloomy or sad, so we went with Intellectual Gray by Sherwin Williams (the lighter swatch with the arrow on the top right pointing to it). Well, it wasn’t dark enough and in the bright sunlight our house gets in the afternoon, it almost completely washed out. We caught the error fast enough that we could switch to the noticeably darker Anonymous (the swatch to the left of that) in time, but we just as easily could have missed it until it was too late (I happened to be backing down the driveway as they painted the portico above our door and I couldn’t even see the paint, so I called Sherry in a panic and she ran outside to see if we could go a shade darker) Phew. Costly disaster narrowly missed. LESSON LEARNED: Unlike interiors, where we err on the side of lighter and less saturated colors, exteriors may just need the opposite – especially in spaces that get lots of sunlight. When in doubt, grab a sample pot of paint and go to town, because sometimes the swatches just don’t cut it for big jobs like this.

Paint Outside

#5 – Well, Not All Exteriors Are Counter-Intuitive. We wanted our new sunroom ceiling to be a subtle blue. Still distinctly blue, but not anything overwhelming (especially since we worried it would reflect into our living room behind it and make the walls in there an eerie smurf blue). So we settled on a swatch that looked subtle yet still blue… but as we started spraying it on outside, it was so faint that we had serious doubts. Sherry could hardly tell what was only primed and what had already been painted, and I couldn’t tell if the only reason I could distinguish them was because I was spraying them, so my mind knew which ones were which. UGH! We immediately started formulating a plan B. I was going to finish spraying everything with one coat, then once it was installed on the ceiling I’d roll on a second coat of the blue that was one step darker on the swatch. But we never needed plan B, because once the individual planks were installed – out of the direct light, against some crisp white trim, and visible en masse – our original paint color pick proved to be the exact subtle blue we had envisioned all along. So this was a near-miss painting mistake that we’ve never mentioned before… until now. LESSON LEARNED: No matter how hard you try to predict how well a color will work, you can’t really ever be totally sure you got it right (or wrong) until you see it completely done, completely dry (paint darkens as it dries), and in place – so don’t judge something laying on the ground outside if it’ll be hanging on a shady ceiling when it’s done.

Paint Sunroom

I think that last screw-up (well, almost-screw-up) gets to the key truth we’ve learned about choosing paint colors. No matter how hard you try or how many steps you take to ensure a good paint decision – you hold up the swatches on the right surface, you view it in multiple lighting situations, you paint big test swatches, maybe you even try photoshopping the space – you can’t predict what a color will truly look like until the paint job is fully complete. Until then, even the best paint color pickers run the risk that it won’t look perfect at a certain time of day, or that it won’t play well with other items in a room, or that once it’s on all four walls it somehow becomes more overwhelming (or underwhelming) than the swatch indicated. Is that the most comforting advice in the world? Probably not. But at least we have oops-ed our way into five paint lessons that we now have under our belts. And we hope they help you guys as you go about your paint-picking ways. Please feel free to share your paint mistakes (and what you learned) in the comment section too. In the end, there’s one mantra we like to repeat whenever we’re especially nervous about a choice, which still happens to this day. Say it with me. “It’s only paint!”

Our Favorite Paint Colors

If you’re having trouble picking the right color to paint your room, check out these detailed deep-dive posts about our favorite paints:

Comments

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I totally remember the preview to that show being in a show I watched (was it Trading Spaces?) but I don’t think I ever caught his show. Now I wish I had!

      xo
      s

    • Tirsa says

      Yes I remember him! (I loved him.) I remember seeing the show in the early 2000’s. He always talked about keeping in mind the color of the floor in relation to the color on the walls and the ceiling. He said it should be considered a wall color too. (Or something like that.) :)

    • Stardancer says

      I remember that show! Well, I remember Christopher Lowell. I had some health problems in the late ’90s and watched a lot of TV, but I was also pretty young so I don’t remember any of his principles. I thought his show was a lot of fun, though.

    • Crystal Hatton says

      I loved Christopher Lowell! I remember him setting up a vignette and having a moveable wall behind it to show how the same objects looked different against a different colored wall. And his seven layers of a room.

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I completely think color, color, and more color can work! As long as those colors seem to flow. We were literally saying “let’s have an orange room and a yellow room and a blue room and a green room!” but the tones of those colors had no relation so we ended up with crazy rainbow going on without much of a palette. But if you decide “I like mint, navy, light coral, tan, and cream” for my palette, that totally sounds fun but like it would flow to me!

      xo
      s

    • Nancy says

      Oh, I KNOW I go COLOR! COLOR! COLOR! But it makes me happy!

      Most of our interior is a warm grey with a bit of blue. But one wall of our open galley kitchen is “oak cask” aka a light mustard yellow. The walk-around wall dividing the living room from the kitchen/dining is plum. My office is DEEP raspberry. My claundry room – closet/laundry – is lighter pink/coral. The master is DEEP teal and the bath is a lighter teal.

      I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will probably have to repaint everything the grey/blue if we ever put the house on the market, but for now it makes me happy.

      So when I saw John’s comment about several jewel tones working I felt very validated. ;-)

  3. Anele @ Success Along the Weigh says

    It’s comforting to know pros like you guys have those little oops moments. I am living with an “oops” in my living room. It was the third shade of green I chose and I was too emotionally exhausted to try again so I just painted and cried. Dork. (Thankfully it’s been 5 years so it’s almost time to repaint. You can be I’m going with a more neutral tone on the wall this time! I don’t have it in me to go through the 50 shades of green again.)

    Reply

    • Nancy says

      Oh my, you just brought back a memory! I knew I wanted teal on the bedroom walls, but I totally mis-gauged the color and chose paint that perfectly matched the lid to Tidy Cats kitty litter – can you picture it? I totally feel for your shades-of-green trauma!

      So, I started putting the b.r.i.g.h.t. teal on the wall (covering up the Barney purple that I’d grown to despise) and completely panicked. It looked horrible!! I immediately called a girlfriend and she drove over 1/2 an hour to meet me at Lowe’s to help me pick out the right color. God love her. Now, I tend to message her pictures for feedback before I reach the desperate stage. ;-)

  6. Emily says

    I completely understand your light blue issue. I bought a bunch of mismatched wooden chairs on Craigslist to paint the same light blue tone, and as I was painting them, they looked completely like white! I started freaking out that they wouldn’t read as blue, and almost stopped. But I made myself finish one chair, put it next to the dining table, and there it looked like the perfect light blue I was going for.

    The lighting in the basement where I was painting must have changed the color. Thank goodness I kept going!

    Reply

  8. Jenne says

    Interesting – our home is all deep jewel tones. We did end up repainting the dining room (but that’s just because hubby picked the colors the first time ;) ). Our master bedroom is Smoked Turquoise; hallway is garnet red with gray wainscoting; stairs to lower level is Bugle Boy gold; dining room is a different gold above the chair rail, with a apple-spice-cake darker topazy color below the chair rail; living room is yet another gold (Beachwalk? Boardwalk? by Behr), and the teenytiny guest room is a huntery/olivey green with cherry-stained wainscoting. Perhaps it works because it is not an open floor plan with rooms flowing into one another, but more defined, specific rooms?

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I think you nailed it when you said it’s all deep jewel tones! Those go together and flow beautifully! Meanwhile we were just picking colors in a vacuum that didn’t relate (bright blue, mint green, butter yellow, etc) so they didn’t really relate to one another. You can completely go with bold colors and still have flow, I think they just should be a “palette” when you see them all together, and not just chaotic and picked in a vacuum without holding them up together, ya know?

      xo
      s

    • Kelly says

      Sounds like we have a similar palette! My office is a deep green, guest room is a dark but bright looking blue, master and kitchen are “red red wine” and the rest of the living spaces are neutral! It can work, especially with crisp white doors and trim work.

      My only “surprise” is that I painted a hall closet turquoise for fun and surprisingly love it!

  9. Allisen says

    I totally feel your pain with the ceiling to wall translation! We painting our kitchen ceiling BM Palladian Blue. Turned out awesome! We loved the muted aqua quality to it that was bold but not in your face so much that we decided it would also look great an the walls in the eating area off the kitchen. WRONG! In there it was something close to Aquafresh toothpaste. It was so bad I repainted the very next day.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Oh man! I hear such good things about that color! I guess it really does depend where you’re using it and the lighting situation/amount of wall space/etc!

      xo
      s

    • Allisen says

      Yep. I think it was definitely our room, not the paint color. Our eating area is an interior room that doesn’t get much natural light. Pictures of Palladian Blue online are almost always on the ceiling or on the walls in rooms with tons of big windows and bright natural light.

  10. Danielle Purtle says

    Love this post. We had great luck with all our colors until the shutters–I told you before about the Easter egg green issue! We fixed it! I will send before and after pictures, though I didn’t take any of the neon Easter egg. :(

    Reply

  11. Wendy says

    Oh man…this posts hits home for me right now! I just repainted our master bedroom because I couldn’t live with it another second. The lighting is so bad in there and we have a tan carpet (which will hopefully get ripped out) that was reflecting on the light grey walls and making them look tan too. We had that same color elsewhere in the house and I love it there but it did not work in that room with the terrible lighting and the tan carpet. Lesson learned! Just because you like a paint color in one room doesn’t mean it will work in another room. We also have a really bold color in our dining room that I’m considering changing…I love it but it is really a statement!

    Reply

  12. Jessica says

    I love that you guys took the time to do this. It’s an interesting way to see the way your style has evolved and nice tips for those looking to paint.

    I am surprised you didn’t include the paint job on the vanity in the new house. I saw that one and cringed immediately! But the other examples are much more lessons than “Oops” situations.

    Reply

  13. Melanie says

    When I was a teenager (15 years ago) my Mom and I were going through a ‘let’s redecorate the whole house!’ phase. We painted everyroom a different color (I was 12 in my defense) – and though every room on it’s own was nice…the already small house felt smaller – antique mauve and beige kitchen, pink bathroom, moss green bedroom with ivy stenciling (my old room), forest green bottom half living room, blue bed room and another forest green in Mom and Dad’s room. It’s bad. I told her last weekend when I was home visiting that I was going to channel my Young House Love (Old House love?) and re-do the house for her and use many of these rules, she’s ecstatic :)

    Reply

  14. Wendy @ New Moms Talk says

    Thank you for sharing this today! We’re hoping to start painting our house in a few months.

    It’s a lovely home with a unique layout. The last owners put on an addition making it like 2 vertical rectangles that meet at the 3/8 point. That creates lots of right angles and allows us to look through windows and see into other parts of the house (which is oddly comforting from a safety perspective late at night).

    I’d been toying with repeating color selections in each part of the house- e.g. bedroom in old and new section would be one color, another bedroom in the old section and the bathroom in the new section would be the same.

    I’ve wondered about the living and dining rooms which is the meeting point of the new and old sections. It seems from reading this that, maybe, using the living and dining rooms the same color might be a good idea.

    Any thoughts from anyone are welcome. Thanks!

    Reply

  15. Kara says

    I am so in love with your outdoor-space-in-progress. My cousin’s house has a full outdoor kitchen/eating space that I’m obsessed with, which is so useful here in LA where you can use it year-round. I actually exclaimed my excitement out loud when I read that you were going to open up the sun room :) LOVE that blue, I wouldn’t have thought to not paint it white!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Thanks so much Kara! We can’t wait to get that tile grouted (just in time for colder temps, womp-womp) – but I’m already planning furniture and fun stuff for spring. I can’t wait!

      xo
      s

  16. heyruthie says

    Thank you for this! I actually think #3 (pick a muddier color) is the one that surprised me the most because I’d never heard that or thought of that before. But it rings so true in my experience!

    I have a question: would you ever be wiling to do a post about *how* exactly you might do this? Although colors don’t show up perfectly on monitors, I would *LOVE* to see a post with color samples that shows something like, “We love this peacock blue, but we think it would be way too garish once we got it on a wall. Instead, we’d try this color on the wall, and probably get the effect we’re looking for.” Some of us have trouble “seeing” the way colors work, KWIM? I know it would be a challenging post, but it would really help me! I go to the store, and I’m *overwhelmed* by all those paint chips!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I love that idea! We’re both visual people too, so that would really be helpful! I love the idea. Pick this, not that (like those books called: eat this, not that). Haha!

      xo
      s

    • Aubrey says

      This. This is what I was trying to suggest in my comment. I think this would be a fabulous post for us color-challenged people!

    • heyruthie says

      Yeeeee Haaaaaw! Yes! “Pick this, not that” is exactly what I had in mind. And please, for the love of all things painted, help someone else to not paint their bedroom Pepto-Bismol-ish Salmon, thinking it was going to look “warm and cozy.”

    • Larissa says

      Yes, please! I was reading “pick something with a grey or brown undertone” and wondering how the heck I’m supposed to see that. I love color, but I definitely do not have an eye for subtleties (and even not so subtle subtleties – that is such a weird word to type repeatedly). I think if I saw a pick this, not that type of thing I could really understand what you mean.

    • Kristi says

      Not to dissuade YHL from posting on the subject, but literally the only other home/decorating blog I visit is on color theory (http://www.mariakillam.com), for exactly this kind of info. I’m completely unaffiliated, I swear!

  17. Starr @ The Kiefer Cottage says

    I actually like rainbow houses! They’re fun. Neutrals give me the willies. So I guess I’m guilty of #1, except I wouldn’t call it a mistake.

    I do agree, though, on the exterior. We’re in the midst of changing our entire outside with new siding and I’m picking something surprisingly tame, the darkest color in our price range. I feel this choice has turned me into a genuine adult…and it only took me 15 years of adulthood to feel that way! The old me might’ve gone for hot pink.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I think #1 is a hard one to put into words. We love colorful houses, it’s just that a palette that flows is usually more successful than something random (when rooms clash with the ones next to them). For example, five swatches for five rooms that are bold and don’t go together might make a house feel choppy and compete-y, meanwhile five awesomely bold jewel tones could be amazing (still bold, but they go together).

      xo
      s

    • Nancy says

      Hot pink!! YES!! LOL
      Our metal roof would be hot pink if it came in that color, I promise you. Of course that’s only because you can’t see our roof unless you’re flying over it. But how cool would that have been!!? HA!

  18. Jessica says

    I love that you guys took the time to do this. It’s really nice to see the way you guys have evolved with style and how you make your choices for paint.

    I was really surprised that you didn’t post the first go round of the vanity in the new house. I cringed so hard when you guys posted it and tried to remind myself that you guys manage to regularly pull looks together that I would never have braved (but I was very relieved when I finished the post and you’d picked a different color). But that was more of an “Oops” than an actual lesson in picking paint.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I thought about that one too! I wonder if John forgot about it because I was the one who painted it. Or maybe he hates the number 6 and thought 5 was better so he skipped it. Haha!

      xo
      s

    • heyruthie says

      Sherry, another paint “mistake” that you’ve posted about before is in a totally different category–painting with the wrong paint finish. I remember that you once painted your baseboards/trim in flat white paint–only to discover how awful it was. In my first house, I did the opposite. I painted the walls high-gloss–and it was a decrepit 50 year old duplex with all kinds of wonky walls, bad spackle jobs, weird seams, etc. And it was TERRIBLE! Also, didn’t you once have issues with the paint/stain you chose for your first sun room floor? I remember there were some interesting lessons you learned from that experience. So, choosing a wrong paint *color* is only the beginning of how you can make painting mistakes, LOL! So many mistakes to choose from, so little time–maybe there’s a “part 2” post in order!!!

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Absolutely! That was a doozie! The first house was such a learning experience for us (we repainted all of the trim and nearly all of the walls – yeesh!). And I know what you mean about high gloss – it’s so shiiiiny and every imperfection practically glows. Great tip! As for the sunroom, I forgot about that! That was concrete stain issue (the semi-transparent finish over a previous stain-job looked muddy and scribbly since the original stain showed through, so going with a solid paint look was a better solution in there. When it was all said and done we had stained that floor twice and painted it twice (well once in a solid color and another time to add the stencils).

      xo
      s

  20. Heather says

    Like you, I painted our bathroom a Tiffany-esque blue at our old house. I envisioned a spa like room with soothing pale blue walls, a white shower curtain. fluffy bath linens around. Instead the blue was too bold & much too bright.

    We lived with it for two years until we rented out the house and moved to VA. It took us less than 4 hours to repaint it a more neutral color.

    Paint is SO easy, especially once you’ve already painted the walls once. There were no holes to spackle, the ceiling & the trim looked great. It was the easiest paint job ever and I hate we waited so long.

    I don’t think out paint nearly as well as I should. Typically I just go to Lowes, find a color I like and go with it. Luckily that blue has been the only color I haven’t liked so far…

    Reply

  21. Lisa says

    Great tips! It’s true that it’s only paint, but man it really stinks when you choose the wrong one. Paint ain’t cheap!

    Similar to your first house with all the various colors, I did the same to my husband and my first house. I don’t know what I was thinking or what I had seen that gave me the inspiration, but we painted rooms neon green, orange (like sherbert), royal blue and gray. LOL, I know it sounds crazy, especially the green but it was softened by neutral furniture and accessories everywhere. Haha, well it’s out of my system now and I tend to go a little more neutral in our current house, still a sucker for those deeply saturated colors. I so badly want to paint a room a deep navy…

    Reply

  22. Jenb says

    I made my major paint mistake when I painted my family room and kitchen a beautiful yellow. Only to find out that at night, under different lighting, it turned a hideous flourescent yellow. That was a lot of repainting. So now I buy a couple of test pots and put up large sections and wait a week or so to see how I like it in different lighting. Sometimes I end up picking the one I didn’t think I would like, but under our lighting it looked great.

    Reply

  23. Krista says

    I love this post. My husband and I painted our house in colors we picked just because we like them. The kitchen is red, his man-cave is dark blue, and the bathroom is a purple that is reminiscent of a Now and Later candy. We like the first two, but the third “bold” color has driven my crazy since day ONE (and we’ve been in the house for a year and a half). It looked totally different on the paint sample and my parents painted it while we were at work. Needless to say, I desperately want to repaint it a more subtle gray-purple!

    Reply

  24. Lynn @ Our Useful Hands says

    Oh yeah we’re big into paint mistakes and learning as we go. We have lived with a blueberry/royal blue living room for almost 2 years now and it’s time to lighten the mood up in here. We have the swatches all over every single wall and we are playing the waiting game to see which one prevails. I saw a horizontally striped wall yesterday in the comments section here (I’m laid up with planters faciitis – Sherry wear good shoes, trust me! – so I get to peruse comments for the last 2 days.) that had the same color but in 2 different sheens. Bingo bongo! That’s our next paint project. I love it. Our walls are our canvas and we can switch it up anytime we’d like.

    My best, Lynn

    Reply

  25. Amela says

    We painted our bedroom a beautiful grey color, got done, and it was clearly BLUE. Next on the plan was painting the orange-y oak trim in there and I decided to do that before repainting the walls. Miraculously, once the orange oak was gone, our grey was actually grey! It was crazy how much that trim changed the look of the wall color.

    Reply

  26. Helene says

    What??!! The green vanity didn’t even get honorable mention? That was my favorite mistake ever, probably because it seemed like something I would do, too!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Haha, I was joking to someone else that when I proofed this post I couldn’t believe John left it out! My only thought is that he forgot about it since I was the one who painted it, or that he liked the number 5 better than 6. Haha!

      xo
      s

  27. Donna LeBrun says

    Thank you Thank you Thank you. Fantastic post and perfect timing. We moved into our new house in February, double our last house and I have had a time trying to get things to flow. I love your diagram of your house layout paint scheme and the stories behind your decisions. We fell in love with Secure Blue for our family room but it threw me off what to do in the rest as I didn’t want choppy. After seeing your layout scheme I calmed down and made some subtle decisions in the other spaces. Congrats on all your projects:) You guys make quite the team!

    Reply

  28. Mia B says

    We’ve made that same overwhelming color palette choice in our first house – we seemed to always be picking something that was “too blue.” The whole house looked like varying shades of “boy nursery” at different times – kitchen, bath, living room and bedroom all got different blues at different times. It wasn’t until we repainted all one neutral color to convert the house to a rental (Relaxed Khaki by SW) that I realized I felt so calm and peaceful in there, and the space seemed huge! I am a convert to the tonal color palette now, and even painted my entire downstairs in our “rental” color because I love it so much. We’re adding color in smaller doses with pantry, laundry room, powder room, etc, and giving the upstairs a blue-gray tonal treatment that plays nicely with the khaki hallway which connects upstairs to downstairs.

    Question – do you know if paint can be re-tinted at the store if it’s “off” from what you expected? For example, can they add more pigment to get to a darker tone on the same swatch (is that what you did to the exterior paint on your current house)? I’ve manually mixed in white to get to lighter colors or mixed up colors to use up leftover paint – our garage took 11 partial gallons of various sheens and similar-ish colors and totally cleaned up my leftover paint hoard – but wondering if there is a more scientific approach.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      We have heard they can usually slide it darker one swatch or so (ex: if it’s too light you can go one swatch darker) but there’s a limit to how much colorant can be added to the base (it was already added in the initial mixing, so there’s only so much more they can add when they retint if that makes sense). Hope it helps!

      xo
      s

    • Nancy says

      Mia B, you made me think of my own question. We have a couple rental houses and one is painted two neutral shades of beige-ish color. A friend told me that you should never paint a house all one color, that you should have at least two colors, even if it’s just one color upstairs and another downstairs (like we have in rental #1).

      What do you think? We may need to paint rental #2 soon and I’m curious — and I’m going to be using your paint color guide from an earlier post to choose color(s) for sure…so, minimum of two interior colors or is one (neutral) color okay?

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I’d love to hear Mia’s take on this. I think either can work (rules are meant to be broken) so I’ve seen gorgeous houses with different colors in every room, and we’ve even seen homes all in one color (both upstairs and down) and it’s really gorgeous with the accessories/curtains/rugs (not boring at all!) so I think that’s awesome too.

      xo
      s

    • Nancy says

      Yes, I’d love to hear what Mia B. thinks, too! Your feedback is good news, since I think for a rental all one color keeps things so much easier. I want to find the PERFECT one-size-fits-all neutral with no green undertones and use it everywhere, forever, lighting be danged! Not asking for much am I??? Oh, and I need a trim color… LOL

    • Mia B says

      Aw, I’m flattered you’d ask my opinion, Nancy! Our second, third and fourth rentals all follow this paint formula: SW Relaxed Khaki on the walls (Behr Premium Plus Ultra in Eggshell) 25% tint Relaxed Khaki on the ceiling (BPPU Flat ceiling paint), off-the-shelf ultra pure white for the trim (BPPU semi-gloss). In the kitchens and baths, we tend to paint the ceiling in the same exact paint as the walls, and it helps them seem bigger, plus the little bit of extra sheen will help with bath moisture or cleanup of kitchen mishaps (boiling spaghetti sauce comes to mind).

      We tend to buy the paint at HD because we seem to practically live there during a renovation, so since we are there anyway, we get the paint there. In our own home, we’ve done a mix of BPPU paint and Sherwin Williams paint (when it is on a deep discount) and both are good. Time is money and I like that we can usually do only one coat with spot touch up on walls and ceilings and one or two on trim, cabinets and doors – helps to get it on the market faster. Our rentals are all one-story houses, around 1200 sf, so maximizing the space visually is key. I have never heard that you need to have at least two colors, but I guess technically you could say our ceilings are sort of a second color. It makes it easy to keep track to do touch-ups of nail holes and scuffs between tenants, too. I wish I’d thought of it when we first started!

      Our first rental which was painted early on before we discovered this color will get this treatment when it is time to repaint, and our fifth rental is under contract right now and we plan to do the same as soon as we get the keys (knock on wood). This color scheme has really worked for us as it seems tenants can really picture themselves in the house and they rent quickly, often with multiple applicants and stiff competition. I love visiting our tenants as they tend to really go all out with decorating and making the house feel like their home, sometimes even buying new furniture to coordinate and it usually looks so good that I am jealous! I often joke and ask them to come to my house to give me tips (I suspect this is because they are living in finished houses and mine is permanently under construction, but whatever!)

      Oh, another secret is that we paint the garage the same color as walls inside, with white trim, too. Makes you feel good to come home and pull your car into a nice place – it sets the tone.

      Thanks for the tip about going darker, Sherry! I will see if we run out of our darker color for our master bedroom, as I have part of a 5 gallon in the next lighter shade still available from the other bedrooms and am thinking of ways to use it up.

    • Nancy says

      Mia B – thank you! I took notes!! I’m hoping not to have to paint the ceilings – we’ve managed to avoid that for far too long, though, so it’s probably in the future. ugh. At least with an empty house we could tape and spray instead of cut in and roll. And great tip about painting them the same color – I’d seen that here on YHL ;-) and liked it -and double great tip about using the eggshell in kitchen/bath. How do you make the transition to another room? Would it work if the transition is huge – room to room instead of room through door to room??

      The ceiling in our house need painting, but I refuse to paint ceilings unless they’re sprayed and I can’t see spraying unless you empty the room, and I can’t quite see emptying the room…arrrrrggggghhhh!!!

      Another Question: If I understood correctly, you get the SW Relaxed Khaki color in either BPPU or SW, whichever is the best buy. We are Lowe’s people ;-) so will probably get it in Valspar. I’ve always bought a brand color, never swapped a color to another brand – how does that work? And do you have a comparison between brands? I know you said you’re happy with BPPU and SW – ever used Valspar? (don’t know exactly which formula, but the one with primer. will never go back to w/o primer!)

      Yet Another Question!: We have always used satin for the walls – what’s your experience w/eggshell v satin – why the eggshell? more forgiving? They seem so close to me –

      THANKS!!!! You are a lifesaver. You don’t know how much relief you have given me by telling me “relaxed khaki” – and I know since it works in so many different properties for you, that surely it will work for us too!! YIPPEEE!!!!

      Nancy

    • Nancy says

      Sherry, I nominate Mia B to write a guest post about painting/prepping rental property!! ;-) It would play well for prepping for resale too, I would think. GO MIA B!

    • Mia B says

      Aaaaaaaaiiiiieee! I would simply die from excitement to write a guest post for my favorite bloggers … I will email you, Sherry! I’m certainly not a complete and total expert on rentals, but we’ve learned a lot over the last five years and am happy to pass along any tips that might help another person.

      Nancy, to continue with my theme of hijacking the comments on YHL’s site, here is another way-too-detailed explanation :) We had used Valspar quite a bit before we went to Behr, and we are Lowe’s people for almost everything else. However, we decided to give Behr a try several years ago because Consumer Reports rated them so highly, and I am now a convert. I don’t think I can go back. I also like SW, which has similar coverage/quality, happens to be closer to my house and is comparably priced to Behr when it goes on sale 30-40% off, which it does fairly regularly. From what I understand, Home Depot has the “SW formulas” by name and number in their computers (and other lines, but I’m not sure which ones), so I can go in and say “SW Relaxed Khaki” or “SW number xxyy” and get it mixed correctly – Lowe’s may have something similar. I do try to bring a paint swatch/paint deck so they can dab it on the swatch to make sure it’s correct. That’s good insurance (and don’t most people carry paint swatches in their purse at all times? Ha!) The only time I’ve ever had a paint color snafu was actually AT Sherwin Williams for a Sherwin Williams color! Their machines can get off and need recalibration, and different locations might not mix exactly the same – the paint strip dabbing would have been key, that time. Too bad we only found out after hubby had already started painting. They were happy to fix it when we went back with the “off” paint and gave us a new gallon.

      Eggshell has a slightly lower sheen than satin, so hides imperfections in the walls better. This would be more important on a smooth wall than a textured wall where a blemish isn’t so noticeable. In our houses (which are all 50+ years old) there are often patches or bumps on the smooth walls and those are magnified and look worse with shinier paint (satin) so we try to go eggshell when possible. If the texture is somewhat hideous, the eggshell helps there, too. One reason you often see flat paint on the exterior of a house is it helps to hide all the weathering a house gets – but the scrubbability is poor on flat paint so you don’t often see it in households that might get a lot of activity like a rental, or in kitchens and baths, or homes with little ones still banging into the walls, etc.

      I would use all one sheen in a big open concept room (and in something like kitchen/breakfast room) and wait to switch sheens until you go to an entirely different room, but you might have to look at your floor plan to see what makes the most sense. We made the switch to freehand cutting in and now a ceiling isn’t really any worse than any other surface.

      We bought an inexpensive (sub $200) paint sprayer our first rental, figuring the carpets were all being ripped out and every surface was getting painted anyway, so why not? It really just was a hassle. We used it on the walls of the first house, and the cabinets of the second, and now it sits lonely and abandoned in our garage. Becoming much more confident on free-handing has made it so we can practically be finished painting by the time we get done with the prep taping/covering and sprayer set up and broken down and cleaned. Our sprayer liked to spit globs of paint – we couldn’t seem to get the right consistency of thinned paint, and later wondered if a higher dollar sprayer would do better (as my father-in-law advised us). Hubby followed me with a paint roller to smooth out the spatters and we both emerged from the house covered head-to-toe with overspray (except around our mouths from the respirators we had to wear because we were literally in a huge paint cloud) so we figured it was pretty ridiculous to keep spraying, especially if you are in a house that either has water off so clean-up is hard, or if the kitchen is already nicely renovated and you don’t want to clean up paint sprayer parts and then have to clean up the sink again, and so on. If you are good at it, though, more power to you!

      Good luck!

      P.S. – are your houses in a wooded/heavily landscaped area? Lots of green outside the windows can make any paint color look kind of green, I think. I hope this is OK with YHL – I have linked my name to our very basic real estate website (it is functional but not anything fancy) with our rentals so you can see the color in three different situations – all the houses listed on Colebrook are Relaxed Khaki. The white balance in all the pictures isn’t the same and your monitor may color things differently, and all the other disclaimers apply, but thought it might help so have linked it.

      P.P.S. – John and Sherry, we read your Elastilon floor posts about a million times this weekend (I have decided to just leave them both open on my phone for the duration). I’m so grateful to you for posting about that experience! We’re through one bedroom and halfway into the hall and are in luuuurrvve with the way the floors are coming together. I’m taking pics as we go with a vague notion of posting to the YHL forums when we are done. Thanks again!

  29. Colleen says

    I think John meant to say “en masse” instead of in mass.

    Otherwise, thanks for this!! After painting our living room a beige-ish color (in natural light) we’re still shocked that it looks green-ish at night. We changed out the light fixture and replaced it with an LED light, but it still is a bit off-putting. We may still have to repaint one of these days.

    Reply

  30. Julie says

    Yiiikes, we are having our exterior painted next week and I’m so paranoid of choosing the wrong color. We’re down to SW Dorian gray, cityscape, and dovetail. Fingers crossed whatever we pick will look good!

    Reply

  31. Dawn says

    “Wouldn’t you know it, our little home had a much easier flow when the rooms weren’t all fighting with each other and announcing their differences (“Now you’re in the light green room!” “Welcome to the bright blue room!” “Bienvenidos a the yellow and red room!)”

    This made me literally laugh out loud. Ha!

    Reply

  33. Tara says

    These are great tips! Another idea is, if you have wood tones in your home (like wood trim), to make sure you choose tones that go along with the wood color! I recently helped my parents paint their dining room, which has a rich warm-toned oak chair rail. At the store, we picked these two beautiful swatches – then came home and realized they looked TERRIBLE next to the railing. Solution? We had a bit of leftover wood that I brought back to Lowe’s with me to find a better color.

    Reply

  34. Kaija says

    I’m in the middle of selecting color for my livingroom-dining area-hallway-some of kitchen, which is all open. After painting 4 greige samples on the walls and rejecting them, I thought I’d try the Edgecomb Grey since it looks so great in your foyer. But no… it’s too dark! I just don’t have enough light due to the large patio awning. So the plan is to try the next lighter shade.

    Reply

  35. Deena says

    Love this! I’ve been slowly repainting our (first) house because we went crazy wacko color picking when we first moved in (is this a first time homeowner thing?). Blood red office, mint kitchen, eggplant purple guestroom (that sucker is dark!), rusty orange living room, gray/blue master… YIKES! And we have a fairly new home, so it’s VERY open concept. Mint kitchen opened into rust orange living. Oy. I’ll pause to allow that color vision to turn your stomach for a moment.

    Luckily we found “our” neutral (New Penny by valspar), so as my taste is evolving in my 30s we’re just bringing every room back down to that neutral. I have found my version of Sue the Napkin (loved the concept) in a modern floral print fabric that has a neutral similar to New Penny with a great rich chocolate brown and a couple of jewel tones. So, once we can get things back to a starting point, time to redecorate / repaint! Or, you know, move and decorate there!

    Reply

  36. Mariecel says

    Thanks for all the tips. I have so many blank walls to paint at home and want to make sure everything flows with what currently exists(shades of taupe, muted light greens, a light tealish slate). My husband’s man room has a blood-red accent wall, however, but I don’t think he’ll ever go with “my” flow when it comes to home decor.

    Anyway, I adore you guys and your blog. I’m a graphic designer by day and everything is good on screen and on paper, but I’m somehow clueless when it comes to my home!

    P.S. LOVE the Say Anything Reference on the paint bucket. Image of John Cusak holding it up: PRICELESS! Now i’ll have “In Your Eyes” stuck in my head all day.
    -Mariecel (the girl at your DC book signing who asked you waht you thought of the latest Twilight Movie).

    Reply

    • Kristi says

      I’m a graphic designer, too, and have the exact same trouble! For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why I was so design-dumb in my own home, but then I thought about how I can never gain any distance from it. Anyone else’s space I’m fine in, but my own is too familiar to ever see it with fresh eyes. Ugh.

  38. Kelly says

    I bought 2 (different) gallons of what I thought were taupe (which we picked when laid in the sunlight coming thru the window) only to find they each had a green cast to them when painted in their respective rooms. I thought the mixer had made a mistake until I held the swatch up to them… I wound up re-painting with the color I originally wanted (I had painted almost my entire last house with it, but had thought “I should pick something different”). Lesson learned on picking paint colors in the correct room & lighting!

    Reply

  39. Lou says

    Wanna learn a new vocab word? I went through the phase when we bought this house (our first) where I looked around like a crazy person and said to myself, “You mean I can paint the walls anything I want!?” whilst clutching paint swatches like they were a certain magical ring. Eventually, only one major room needed to be subdued: a long kitchen/dining room combo that I had painted two different colors. At first I tried for beige (why? I hate beige!) thinking it was safe. In the end, the lighting in the long rooms, both at night and during the day was too different. It was impossible to pick a shade that wasn’t terrible in one of those situations. When a color changes tone because of objects next to it or different lighting, this is called *metamerism*. So my only choice was to find a color that looked good in all of it’s manifestations. In came this wonderful sage/blue/grey. It changes all the time but each version looks nice. I think that is one reason the grey trend has been so sweepingly popular.

    Reply

  40. Aubrey says

    I guess I just have a hard time picking colors because I have a hard time telling which swatches have grey or brown undertones. Maybe you can show some swatches (of say the teal from the built ins). One that has a grey or brown undertone and one that is more saturated? It might be helpful to see them side by side!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Someone else requested that and I ran it by John and he loves that idea! We’ll do a follow up all-visual post with swatches called Pick This, Not That – and we’ll call out things like “in a room with low light, pick this, not that” (and show the swatches so you can see the undertones and intensities). I’m weirdly excited about it!

      xo
      s

  41. Arli says

    Thanks for this great and timely post. I’ve been stumped on paint colors for my apt. for a year now so reading this has been very helpful. Maybe by the time you’ve finished ALL the renos in your new house I’ll have picked a living room color! :)

    Reply

  42. Isabel says

    I think bad wall color choices are like a decorating rite of passage, you have to make at least one! We’ve made a few in our new house – the floor plan is such that every room flows into the next – but we’re slowly course correcting and well call me a nerd, I think it’s fun.

    Speaking of paint and also wallpaper, I remembered someone commented on your last wallpaper post that their wallpaper situation was so bad removing it was damaging the wall. I found some information about a product called Gardz that you can use to seal the wallpaper so you can safely paint over it:

    http://www.wikihow.com/Paint-Wallpaper-Using-Gardz.

    I also read that you can use oil-based primer and paint instead of water-based and it will also seal it:

    http://www.wikihow.com/Paint-Over-Wallpaper

    So figured I would put that out there for folks with wallpaper woes that might want to look into it. The bottom layer of our dining room wallpaper is extremely stuck, so I may have to go the paint route, but I’m not ready to let it win just yet!

    Reply

  43. Ashley says

    I am so glad you did this post!! I just finished painting my hallway YESTERDAY. I’m in my first home, and have had some pretty big paint screw-ups, just in the last five months! I swear I’ve chosen hallway colors seven or eight times, and just repainted it to a beautiful light (so-very-very-light) gray over a HIDEOUS pinky-purple nursery color. I still have to correct the living room mistake of cement gray, but I’m the kind of girl who likes to actually paint the colors on her wall-no swatch-holding for me! I will never paint a wall again without the proof on the wall :)
    I think it’s also important to understand what kind of house you have and work with an “appropriate” palette. I have a little cottage–8 foot (pop corned) ceilings (although that’s coming down one room at a time), so I can’t really paint too dark , and when I have this beautiful light washed gray color, it lets me bring in color with my furniture and art, without cramping in the already small space. That being said, however–I lived the dream and painted my guest a GORGEOUS rock-star plum color (Grappa by BM) and I’m not looking back!

    Reply

  44. Trela says

    You definitely need to find Christopher Lowell online somewhere — you must channel a lot of his ideas without realizing it (ok, they’re just good design). Your napkin-colored house at the last place is JUST like him. Might give you some ideas for your random (but awesome) craft projects, too. His was the first design show I ever watched, and my husband got used to me tossing around the name Christopher like I toss around JohnandSherry (it’s one word) now.

    Reply

  47. jenn aka the picky girl says

    I *may* have gotten up to nearly 30 paint samples for the exterior of my house. Ok, not may have, did. I was trying to match the paint from a house further away in my neighborhood that I LOVE. They were so kind and gave me a sample of their paint, but it was so old that it looked completely different. When I finally decided on a color, it looked hunter green on my front porch (shaded), and I was devastated. Thankfully, only that portion was painted, so I was able to go back and get the color I love now.

    And this summer, we were able to paint my grandmother’s house with the hunter green paint (which actually doesn’t look as hideous as it sounds on her place).

    Reply

  50. Marcie says

    Thanks for the great tips. I’m going to bookmark this post and keep it for reference! I’ve always loved the beachy soft colors of your first house. The bolder colors of your second were fun and playful…a reflection of your lives as a new young family. Your current house seems like it’s going in a direction that’s a more sophisticated marriage of the two. I can’t wait to see it evolve!

    Reply

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