Leave a CommentShare: |
Subscribe
When I was a little girl, the homes I lived in with my parents always had white walls. My father’s theory was that you never decorated your house in a way that might put off potential buyers.
My father was always prepared to put the house on sale. :wall:
I never subscribed to this theory and as soon as we bought our first house, I started painting. I thought our house in Texas was beautiful–with painstakingly sponge-painted walls in the kitchen and dining room, and carefully coordinated colors in every other room. The people who bought it promptly painted the entire house white. So maybe my dad was right and that’s what most people want. We moved into our new house in North Carolina–and all the walls were white. I’m working on what I figure is probably a five-year decorating plan to wipe out the white. The dining room is a gorgeous deep red now–the room is not quite finished since I still need to hang things on the wall and do something about window coverings. (Do I? I keep thinking that window looks just fine with NO window treatment, but yet it seems unfinished…..)
I finished painting my living room this weekend. See that big space over the couch? I can’t figure out what to put there. I tried framed photographs, but they didn’t look quite right. When we moved in, there were ugly green drapes on the windows, the walls were white, and the wainscoting was a dark wood stain. I painted the wainscoting white to lighten up the room and used a pretty Buttercup color on the walls. Yes, the walls match my cat. He looks really good sprawled out in there. 
I painted the front hall the other day, but I don’t like the furniture in there. I keep looking and looking, but I can’t find the right thing. I used a pretty neutral sand color on the walls because it coordinates with the unfinished wallpaper I’m putting up in the kitchen. I’m still waiting for the wallpaper to leap onto the walls all by itself.
I’m taking the sand color all the way up the stairs and down the very long upstairs hallway. See where I stopped? Yeah, that’s where it got hard, LOL. How am I supposed to get to the ceiling edge going up the stairs when you can’t set a ladder on stairs? I don’t know but I’ve promised my family that when I get back from Reno I will risk life and limb getting the rest of the stairway painted. Then on to the kids’ rooms–my daughter’s room is already painted red. My office is purple (but only half-finished) and the boys have yet to pick their colors. There’s also a big den upstairs and a third-story office for my husband. Downstairs, there’s still the master bedroom, but the color is still under debate. I want a soft, sagey green. My husband hates green. And then there are the bathrooms….
I’m not sure five years is long enough for this plan. :fryingpan:
So what about you? Are the rooms in your house a million different colors, or do you stick with white?
Posted by Suzanne McMinn on July 20, 2005
8:58
am
Downstairs our house is yellow, blue and citrine (?I believe N. Americans call it–Brits call it lime green:???:)
Upstairs is a bit of a disaster. It would have bee various shades of blue with a deep red and grey bathroom but I went for this vile Barbie pink in the hallway that my daughter loves :yuck: DH says it’ll be at least a year before we paint it out :neutral:
Love the house Suzanne!!
9:33
am
9:35
am
I LOVE that red in your dining room. What a beautiful, rich color.
9:39
am
9:42
am
My dad just doesn’t get the color thing either. lol He keeps saying, you had brand new paint on there, why are you redoing it? :fryingpan:
9:52
am
A long time ago someone asked me some questions that would reveal what I really felt about certain things. Like, what’s your favorite body of water? It was supposed to reveal what you felt about sex. So if you said your favorite water was in a teaspoon, well that would be totally different than if you said you loved the ocean with all it’s wildness and movement.
Another question was how would you feel if you were in a completely white room, no windows or doors. I said, I’d want to redecorate. LOL! The completely white room is supposed to represent ‘death’ and how you feel about it. Hmmmmm…..
Aren’t I chatty today?
10:20
am
After that fiasco, we haven’t dared paint any of the other rooms.
10:23
am
Suzanne — you can rent a ladder that’s designed to be used on stairs.
10:32
am
10:39
am
My house is full of bold colors and I love it. I recently painted my livingroom ‘sizzle’ which is a deep orange and I love it!
My litchen is deep blue and strong yellow.
The only room in my house with out color is my bathroom and I’m going to change that soon.
10:56
am
Mary, a ladder for stairs?! Oooh. But somehow that sounds so scary, LOL.
My daughter’s room in our old house was pink. I was surprised when she chose red here.
10:58
am
You’re doing great on your 5 year plan!
11:04
am
11:14
am
11:44
am
12:11
pm
12:44
pm
Your colors are great.
12:51
pm
Just keep looking for that perfect hall furniture and something for over the sofa. Don’t settle, you’ll know its perfect when you find it, and I hope you’ll show it to us then. :smile:
1:28
pm
2:03
pm
But, like Jill, I’m soon not going to have many walls standing.:hissyfit:
2:05
pm
3:09
pm
When we moved into our home I was 6 months pregnant with baby #1 and had baby #2 11 months after the first. (still not sure how that happened.
ops: ) Needless to say, I didn’t change the walls. LOL We have a brick Victorian with 11′ ceilings and hardwood floors. What wasn’t papered in sage green print was painted cream. The kitchen and lower bathroom were papered in small rust/blue prints which are much closer to something I’d pick out.
Hugs,
Marcy
3:30
pm
We have lots of painting to do here. And now my middle chicken, who WANTED Pepto Bismol pink, decided she wants her walls a different color. SIGH
Grins*
4:12
pm
4:19
pm
4:53
pm
I have a blue dining room and a yellow kitchen. Then I ran out of steam and everything else is eggshell.
5:10
pm
Right now, our house is mostly white. I admit to being hopeless about color and design and fashion and all that stuff, so I’ve stuck with plain white. I did have the girls’ room done, it’s a really pale yellow on 2 walls, and then half of the yellow and half of the white with a winnie the pooh border separating the two. Dh surprised me during my first RWA conference, I came home to my bedroom painted a pretty sage green with white trim, but he ran out of paint and it’s got some spots that need touching up.
I’ve thought about doing my family room in that sand color, but since I want a new house, my mom, who’s a realtor, said to leave it white. People prefer to buy houses with white walls so they can do their own thing to it.
Oh,and red dining rooms… a friend of mine has one, and I’ve always admired it. But then I was reading in a feng shui thing that red makes people hungrier. Interesting, huh?
Anyway, as soon as that man buys me a new house, you’re invited to come stay with us, help me pick out colors and then sit on the patio drinking fruity f*ckers (er, if I find a recipe) while DH does all the work. :bananadance:
5:17
pm
Kate, I do make my kids take their shoes off as soon as they come into the house. But I didn’t pick out this carpet and it is a pita! I have to have the carpet cleaner come out often!
5:34
pm
Pretty well all white walls here, though I did my best to cover all the wall paint in my bedroom with posters :bananadance: Though some day soon we will apparently have a blue kitchen and a nice soft sand color in the living room.
For painting stairs like yours, you might want to try an ARTICULATING LADDER (sorry for the caps I grabbed it off a website) my dad has one, made painting the downstairs hall a lot easier. You can set it up like a scaffold and adjust it a bunch of ways.
7:41
pm
7:51
pm
8:43
pm
I love the colors you chose especially sand and buttercup yellow. Those would go well with my furniture. Since I had not only furniture to match but also paintings and other accessories, I went for the white. It’s much easier to accessorize though much more boring. But then, most of my walls are covered by bookshelves so not much white remains.
My mother and sister together put up wallpaper in the biggest staircase in our house–where I lived before moving here. They had to accommodate the split level and used a stepladder with a plank from the middle level to the floor or bannister of the top level to do the highest part of the wall. Your highest point certainly is high. Maybe you could ask painters how the do that sort of thing.
By the way, your dining room looks great. I love that rich red per se, though it wouldn’t go too well with anything I have. You’d probably have to put quite a large painting above the couch, maybe an elongated one though not as long as the couch of course. But that’s just my opinion.
9:22
pm
10:10
pm
I laughed at your discussion of wall colors. When we moved into our house, every wall in the house was off-white. The only sign of color was the lower part of the kitchen wall was painted brown. All that white was dullsville no end. I started painting and using very bright colors. My front hall and dining room are antique gold, my living room orange, my son’s bedroom blue, both baths and master bedroom different shades of rust. Everyone who sees my house just raves about how pretty it is and yet, I’d bet, many aren’t brave enough to use such color. I once painted one bathroom bright red, then used black towels. The red walls, white fixtures and black towels were pretty. But that bathroom is now rust. I can’t imagine living in a house with all white walls. My living room furniture is cherry wood and upholstered with an Early American print containing orange. Goes so well with the walls that I can’t think of any other color to change the walls should I decide to repaint.
Many people will only paint their walls white or off-white. Then they decide to hire a decorator and what does the decorator do? Immediately use bright colors. It livens up the place.
11:22
pm
5:52
am
6:29
am
6:29
am
Living room will be warm yellow/straw colour walls with new covers for the sofa in the same green as the dining room. I’d like to do red in the bedroom, but I’m not sure how DH would go with that…
The spare room is the only one that’s decorated (priorities, anyone?). Cream ceiling, rich golden yellow on the walls. The bedding is gold, cream and the same purple as your site, and I’ve got pictures and cushions that pick out those colours too.
We have a big, multi-level, well-lighted stairs and landing, and it looks really good with its white-painted bookcases, plants and pretty things. I’m tempted to go for a pretty sprig-pattern wallpaper, which is not my thing at all, but I suspect it would look really good.
The bathroom is the only room that will stay white. White, lots of jungle plants, candles, and pretty glass bottles of expensive unguents….
6:49
pm
5:24
am
Love the sand color!
That space above your couch needs a LARGE frammed print. Horizontal to be exact. The room is big, the fire place is big. And it’s all about balance. Anything too small or too many things put together would look strange because it doesn’t keep it all in balance.
I am also an advocate for Bannish White Walls and have managed to convert people as I go. My dad retired from the military. So we lived in base housing my entire childhood. Which means the walls were always white.
There isn’t a single white wall in my house…well, okay, the basement walls, but we haven’t hung dry wall over the cinder blocks, so that doesn’t count.
My living room is an interesting color. It was supposed to be a soft pink to highlight the beautiful cherry wood furniture and oriental carpet–and it does! People love it after starring at it for a moment. But it only looks soft pink in the morning and evening. What I didn’t factor in when I selected the paint color was lots of sunlight from a HUGE floor to ceiling (minus 2 ft) living room window. During the day it looks kinda like Peto Bismal. Every time I swear I’m going to repaint it, my friends say, “No! Don’t! It really looks good.”
Sheesh. Trust me. I can make it look good again–in another color!
5:31
am