Yellows, grays and blues, oh my!

If it were up to me, our whole house would be painted in various shades of gray. There is no hiding it, I love me some gray! However, as my husband so lovingly pointed out, a successful marriage is built on compromise. (Don’t worry, I’ll persuade him to the gray side!) So, with our Sherwin-Williams color deck in hand we intently scoured the fan of colors searching for the perfect shade to paint our living room (paneling and all!). We searched through reds and greens, blues and purples, whites and tans, but in the end, guess where it all led back to – GRAY! Well, not just gray, but yellows and blues as well.

Here are some factors we used to choose the perfect color:

· Although we have a large bay window at the front of the house, the majority of sunlight enters in around 5 or 6 pm. Therefore, mornings and afternoons are on the darker side so we knew we needed something light and cheerful.

· Additionally, we wanted a semi-neutral color palette so we could use bright pops of color to liven the space up.

· Lastly, we wanted to stick with a calming palette of colors to provide some kind of unity throughout the painted spaces on the first floor.

We narrowed our living room paint choices down to five colors – Glad Yellow, Misty, Grayish, Gray Screen, and Passive (or as Jay refers to it – Passion). (Colors are listed in the order in which the samples were painted on the wall).

Although we originally thought a nice and cheery yellow living room would be a great way of brightening up the space, I just couldn’t pull the trigger. So we chose…I’m sure the suspense is killing you…MISTY. According to the Sherwin-Williams website, Misty is technically in the blue family but is pretty much a combination of pale blue and gray with a shot of yellow (PERFECT!). Pretty much, all of our three color choices combined!

I’d like to add a little disclaimer at this point. I can’t remember the last time I painted - maybe my mom’s house 10 years ago? I painted her dining room this green color and from what I can remember, I didn’t do such a great job. As for Jay, I found out he was no Picasso either. Actually as we were preparing to prime the paneling he said, “Now I just have to warn you, I’ve spilled about two gallons of paint before on my dad’s floor”, Really dude?? Get the heck off of our hardwood floors with that half gallon of white primer!

So off we went priming the paneling, painting the paneling and then the walls. Though Jay didn’t spill the paint, he had a few technical difficulties (don’t worry babe, I still love you!). He actually had to leave half way through our painting project to take Josh to lacrosse practice. I’m not sure if I was upset or relieved. At least now I wouldn’t have to keep looking over my shoulder to make sure our floors didn’t have paint stains. But, two coats later and all by my lonesome, I was thoroughly traumatized and vowed to hire a painter for any future painting projects!

After what felt like an entire day of painting, the room was complete! Check out some before and after pictures below.

Before:

During:

After (voila!):

Although you can't tell online, the color of the room changes depending on the time of day. Sometimes it's completely blue, other times we only see gray. However, what we can say about the color is that we absolutely love it!