2/19/2023 0 Comments Shade control gun 54 greyDo you want a cool or a warm neutral? Think about the art, rugs, furniture and textiles you will use in the space – do they lean cool or warm?.So, when you’re selecting a neutral paint color for your home, keep in mind these tips: Each room will probably look different, depending what direction it’s facing and what’s outside the windows. In spring and summer, the light filters green through the trees. When there’s snow outside you get a colder light filtering into the room. When you live somewhere with distinct seasons, particularly in a natural setting, the light changes throughout the year. Ugh! I couldn’t live with it, so learned my lesson about testing colors immediately. It ended up looking like an overdose of bright citron, with a limey tint. I bought the cans and painted the room myself. I found the sample I liked, “Lemon Yellow” (which should have been a warning sign in and of itself, but it looked light and buttery on the 1” x 2” chip, and I thought it would be perfect). I learned this lesson as a newly married young woman when my husband and I moved to the east coast and I wanted to paint my studio a nice, buttery yellow. We all know to never paint a room without testing paint colors. We ended up with 54 shades of gray on the walls before I determined the right color! There was snow outside the large windows and, we decided, the cool blue tones of fresh snow must be reflecting off the walls inside. In the kitchen, where I had selected lovely grey tiles, I walked in after paint samples were brushed on the walls and was horrified to see how BLUE and cold they looked – so different from how they appeared in the living room. The painter was very patient as he brushed swaths all over the house. I dove into color research, looked at loads of different grays, and selected several to sample. All you need to do is look up at the clouds to notice the range of colors and tones. “This is not going to be easy.” There is a huge variety of undertones in neutral colors (whether grays, whites or beiges). The gray shade I had lived with elsewhere looked green here! “Uh-oh,” I thought. I went to check and was aghast at how dark these shades looked on the wall, as well appearing as various shades of lavender, blue green, mauve and yellow. I asked the painter to paint several 2’ x 4’ swaths on the office wall from a selection of my favorite grays. I was familiar with some other grays I loved, that I had seen in beautiful spaces. A home I lived in previously had walls painted the perfect light, warm gray, and I thought it might look similar in this new home (both houses are in the same general area on the mountainside). I wanted the walls to be a soft, neutral backdrop… a soft misty gray would be just right for the space so the other materials (stone, metal, concrete, nubby textiles and great art) would be the stars of the show. Selecting the right gray paint color for your home seems like it would be fairly straightforward, right? I wish! I recently designed a home in the mountains, full of natural, organic materials and textures.
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