Making Mistakes

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Picking paint colors is hard. Very hard. Way harder than it looks. My first post about the living room referred to the slight battle over color palate that occurred in Chez JTE. Blue-gray, said Tracie. Saturated bold color, said J. (Okay, really he said "I want it cozy! Like a cave!)

Our solution was to grab every paint chip that slightly appealed to either of us. After taping a few to the walls, I conceded that J might-might-have a point. Our little home is light filled...except for the living/dining room. The lovely double window actually gets very little light because of the porch roof over it. Add in the window treatments (a term I despise) needed for privacy (lots of tourists on our street who probably don't want to see The T&J Show when they walk past) and the room loses even more light. The light colors I favored looked dingy and dull in our natural light starved room, while Jeremy's dark colors made it look moody, sophisticated purposeful.

Picture from Desire to Inspire

Looking at pictures like this one tilted me towards the dark and dramatic side.

True confession, I despise our dark leather sofa. It came with my husband, whom I do love, so I put it up with it. I love how in the dark walls absorb the dark sofa and make the whole room look so well thought out and sophisticated.

I also fell for this picture.

From here

It's just so dramatic and rich looking.

So off we went to Home Depot, where we picked up a tester of Martha Stewart's Chocolate Truffle. Oh. My. God.

This is the sample. Yes, it looked this bad. No, actually, it looked worse. Why did I take the picture from that insane angle? No idea. The paint transformed our living space into where light came to die. And instead of absorbing the sofa...it was like the sofa won! It took over my entire living room.

We lived with it for awhile, as J at first wanted to defend its qualities (cavelike doesn't, really, qualify as a plus, bless his heart). At the end, he had to admit it wasn't working. So we primed over the chocolate splotches (lesson learned, paint on poster board from now on). It took awhile and some more samples but we finally settled on Martha Stewart's Burlap colormatched to Sherwin Williams.

We paid for our own paint and have no affiliation with Sherwin Williams, so this is a totally unbiased review, but I loved this paint! It was so creamy and we had no drips. Zero. Nada. And the coverage, considering old walls and fairly deep color, was amazing. I can't recommended it enough. Loved it. Looking forward to their next sale so we can buy some more paint!

This is still a fairly deep color, but it looks fantastic with our dark brown leather sofa. It's exactly what I wanted chocolate truffle to do.

So picking paint colors...sometimes the second time is the charm.