Paint By Numbers

After living in our house for a few months we decided it was time to adjust some of the paint colors.   Many of the colors the previous owners chose we loved however, the color of the living room we weren't as crazy about.   It wasn't offensive or anything just a bit too much pale yellow-y beige-y.  We are hoping to go for more of a blue/grey shade.   The room has beige carpet, maple colored trim and white baseboards,  in addition there is also a brick fireplace.  We needed to keep this all in mind when picking colors to make sure everything would tie together nicely

We stopped at Home Depot and picked up 8 samples.   Right away we could eliminate 3 or 4 of them.   Color #1, 3 and 7 we our favorites so we took the night to think about it.  If you are wondering were color #4 is, we tested it on a different wall and didn't like it.  The color was such a light gray I couldn't really photograph it well.

We finally settled on "school house slate" from the Martha Stewart line (paint color #1).   It wasn't too blue or too gray.   It took us about 5 hours to paint the two coats, which actually seems fast for a 20x30 ft. room.   Nick hates cutting/trim and I'm not crazy about rolling so we making a pretty mean painting team!

Before:

After:

The new slate blue-gray helps make the room seem smaller, which normally wouldn't be what one would go for but it's really a massive room.   The color makes it feel more cozy and home-like.

Our hope is to add white crown molding at some point to coordinate with the white baseboards, not sure if I want to paint the window molding white yet.  We also still need to address the stairwell upstairs.  The walls and ceiling are quite high and we weren't sure if we wants to have the new color go all the way up the stairs and hall or do something different.