How to Choose a Paint Colour

It’s amazing how something so simple as painting a room can change the feel of a space completely. It’s easy to see how paint choice can make such an important impact on the place you’re decorating. Unfortunately, we all too often fumble with this important decision. Don’t worry. It happens to everyone- even home improvement-hungry people like us at The Twenties Project. So if you find yourself in the paint aisle going cross-eyed from staring at paint chips for so long, here a couple of rules we follow to try and make the right decision.

First off, the color has to work with the rest of the room. It’s nice to want to pick a color because it’s your favorite or because you grew up with the same color in your living room, but if it doesn’t end up working with your textiles and furniture than it’s better off somewhere else- otherwise you’re going to end up hating it!

Keep in mind though when we’re talking about a paint color “going” with the rest of the room, we don’t mean matching. No. Don’t do it. Here’s the secret to why matching things is frustrating: because colors are not all made the same.

This is your mini science lesson for the day: we all know that the human eye sees color based on a light spectrum. And that light spectrum is created when light bounces off of things. Unfortunately, that means depending on what the light is bouncing off of, the color will appear different to our eyes. Smooth surfaces, textured surfaces, even different types of cloth are very rarely going to appear the exact same color. See what we mean? Paint is never going to match a cushion, or a rug, or a smudge in a painting exactly.

Nor should it! You wouldn’t wear the exact same blue pants and blue shirt because you’d want to avoid obvious comparisons to a blueberry. So making sure that everything in a room was the same color blue would make you feel as if you were living in a blueberry. So unless your name is James and your last residence was a giant peach, stay away from matching everything.

So how do you incorporate color into a room that’s already filled with colorful stuff? Do what the designers do and “pull” a color. It may be the background color of a pillow, or a tiny polka dot on the pattern of your rug. Try and choose a paint chip that most closely resembles that color. You may even want to pick out a few just in case.

When in doubt, go for a neutral color. It’s hard to go wrong and it’s the safest bet for pulling everything in the room together, especially if you’re still recovering from blueberry syndrome.

Throw those paint chips up on the wall of the room you wish to paint and leave them. Study them. Live with them a little bit. Look at the tones that are slightly above and slightly below the color you’re thinking about as well.

Move the paint chips around the room occasionally and see how the light bounces off of them. How do they look in the morning compared to the evening? In the night? With the lights on and off? With just one lamp on?

Last but not least, if wavering between two shades of paint is making you go cross-eyed, go for the lighter one. Paint usually dries slightly on the darker side, and once a paint color is up in a room you might find the impact of the darker shade harder to absorb at first.

For example, when I was a teenager and my sister and I shared a room, the only color we could agree on to paint it was yellow. We both decided on what we thought was a really inoffensive, pale yellow color. Once we threw it up on the walls we realized- wow. That’s pretty yellow.

The good news about choosing a paint color is that it doesn’t have to be that stressful. If you really can’t stand the shade of green you picked, or fell out of love with the warm brown you picked out years ago, paint it again! It’s an effective and cheap way to makeover a room to suit whatever it is your style and needs dictate.

moving aftermath: what to do with ground zero

Probably one of the most exciting (and terrifying) aspects of moving is the moment when the lease has been signed, the movers have left and you’re alone for the first time in an apartment (or room, or house, or whatever) that you can finally call yours. The place is full of boxes, there’s no food in the fridge and everything is completely fresh- but completely empty. It can be difficult to decide where to start slowly putting your life back together.

Everyone likes to work at their own pace when starting from ground zero. I had one friend who had unpacked, painted and decorated within three days of moving in. There are other people I know (who shall not be named) who still have boxes to unpack. Hey, I have an excuse. Half of my stuff is in storage.

Whether you take a few days off to execute your carefully constructed plan, or find yourself unpacking between working shifts, here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Everything has its place. Make sure that all of your carefully labelled boxes (more on that here) are all in the appropriate rooms. It’s going to make everything easier to unpack if all the kitchen stuff is in the kitchen- or at least somewhere near it- so you don’t have to go on a wild good chase for the coffee filters.

Defend thyself. If you’re moving into a rental, make sure that you go through the apartment making notes of any repairs that need to be done, or issues that need to be addressed. More often than not a landlord requires you to sign a form stating that you’ve found the apartment to be in good condition. Be careful about signing this before you really look through your apartment. If something needs to be fixed and you don’t mention it now, you may have to pay for it out of your own pocket later on down the road.

An empty house is an easy-to-clean house. Take the opportunity to give everything a good clean if the previous tenants or owners don’t appear to have done so before they’ve left. A deep clean is a great way to make a fresh start and will make unpacking a much more enjoyable experience. There’s nothing worse than putting away your clean dishes onto grimy kitchen shelves.

Arrange. Rearrange. Repeat. Now’s the time to try and perfect your furniture arrangement. (Unless you’re like S and like to change it up every six weeks.) It’s easier to move boxes of things out of the way instead of taking everything off of shelves/coffee tables/side tables and moving them, and then replacing everything. If you’re getting furniture delivered, make sure you account for all the space that you’re going to need.

Get out your Allen key. Got furniture you need to assemble? Enough said. Make sure you anticipate the need to put items together by making sure your tools are part of the luggage including all of your essentials.

Last (but not least), enjoy! Most of the hard work is over. This is where all the fun can begin!

Have you moved recently? Want to tell The Twenties Project all about it? Your moving horror story could be featured in an upcoming post! Give us a shout at thetwentiesproject@gmail.com.

hiccups

After my D.I.Y. shopping spree, I found myself on a D.I.Y. roll. It was like the universe was calling out to me, “B! Paint something! Reupholster something! Show the world how crafty you are!”

I guess somewhere the universe must have picked up on that crafty juju as a former client and friend of mine contacted me the next week and asked me if I was interested in some free bookshelves. She warned me that they were a little bit shabby but they were still pretty solid. So of course, I said yes. Anyone who knows me knows that I would never say no to a free bookshelf. Or a free anything that has to do with books for that matter.

apartment living: the dining room (design process)

I think everyone should have something they have created in their homes, whether it be a series of photographs, small sculptures or, even, for the more ambitious, a piece of artwork. Not only does it create a completely unique and personal touch to any room but it allows one to be in complete control of translating their design plan into reality, without having to settle on something you hadn’t quite envisioned for the space.

E and I have been living in our apartment for about six months now and unfortunately, the dining room is no where close to being finished. Unfortunately, right around the time we moved in, the company I worked for went bankrupt and I was laid off – so, as you can probably guess, not a great deal of extra money for decorating.