Hello Friends! I hope you are safe and healthy wherever you are. We are in deep in the Second Wave and modified Stage 2 Lockdown here. Even though I knew the Second Wave was coming, I admit that I lost a bit of my mojo for awhile and decided to take a break from home projects.. Hands up if you are experiencing emotional fatigue. Thankfully, I had done quite a fair amount of painting already before my mojo dissipated as I had just can't imagine spending all that time and effort right now picking out the perfect paint colour. Here are my tips and suggestions for picking a paint colour that you will be happy to live with for years to come.
First of all, I always use Benjamin Moore paint. I just have not found another brand that is its equal in terms of spreadability and coverage. I have tried more affordable paints in the past but it wasn't worth it in the long run as I ended up spending more time and effort applying the paint and then needing more of it. I wanted to repaint a section of the front hallway that was opposite to a feature wall that was painted with North Sea which is a deep, midnight blue. I needed a colour that would marry well with the rich tones of North Sea.
Obviously, as everyone does, I looked over an ever growing stack of paint chips. However, you don't want to stop there. I also used the Benjamin Moore website where you can see what the paint colour looks like in various rooms. You need to think about where the paint colour is going to be applied. Is it a high touch, high contact area? The hallway was a high touch area and was looking scruffy with lots of fingerprints and stains. Would a washable finish be more suitable? Benjamin Moore has announced the colours of the year for 2021. The Colour Trends of 2021 Palette is a great jumping off point for inspiration. How a paint colour reads on the wall can change not only with the ambiant light in that area but any colours that it is placed with. There is no natural light in my hallway. Any lighting is mainly from LED bulbs which gives off a cool toned light. Incandescent bulbs tend to give off a warm toned light. Initially I thought a pale grey would work with North Sea.
You would think this would be a straightforward process but nooooooooo.....! This is where the magic of colour sampler tins comes in. Benjamin Moore offers colour samplers for around $11. I went mad picking out paint samplers to try out on the wall beside the feature wall. There are so many variations of pale grey with greys that have a blue, green, brown or pink undertone. In the above photo, you can see different patches beside the feature wall. Would you believe that they are all variants of grey? But no matter what shade of grey it was, when placed adjacent to the feature wall, it would pick up a blue tinge. All of them were too pale to hold their own against North Sea.
Finally, after a great deal of hand wringing and staring at a section of wall that was beginning to look exactly how I was feeling (ie bonkers), I went back to a colour that I have used before, Hiking Trail. The only way I can describe it is that is a warm milk chocolate. It is the same colour that I have used in the kitchen and as a feature wall in the living room. It has enough depth of colour to stand up to North Sea.
I have a section of wall in the hallway that has a pair of watercolours hung on it so Hiking Trail makes a good backdrop to those paintings as well. That is another consideration that you might want to bear in mind as well. Do you have any artwork on the wall? I liked the fact that I was using a colour that had been used in other areas of my home because I am a big believer in a sense of continuity in a home. Paint colour is a great way to establish a sense of flow in a home especially if you have a small home like I do.
I think what really decided me on Hiking Trail was the fact that, when I stood at one end of my home, I was able to envision an enfilade of feature walls. So that is another tip I have for you which is to stand at different vantage points in your home. I don't think that I had ever stood at that point in my home, as depicted above, and really thought about what I was seeing. That wall at the far end used to be a light sand colour, Manchester Tan, the same colour that you see on the left. It didn't really make the artwork pop. I love how there is a feature wall in the foreground and then a matching feature wall in the background. I will say that I wasn't prepared for how much darker it felt in the hallway. All the paint colours come with an LRV which is the Light Reflective Value. Manchester Tan, for example, has an LRV of 64.41 whereas Hiking Trail has an LRV of 24.78. So the LRV of a colour is another consideration to weigh up. I love Hiking Trail in the front section of hallway adjacent to the feature wall painted with North Sea but, to be honest, the jury is still out about the section of hallway that you see in the background. I am used to it now but one day I might switch it back to a colour with a higher LRV.
I hope you have found these suggestions useful. Please chime in if you have any other tips.
