The Power of Paint
If you’ve been reading my blog, you will know that my dear friends recently sold their acreage and are downsizing to the city. They found a beautiful home in the same community that I live in and I’ve been very fortunate to help them transform this house into their home.
When looking at refreshing their home the obvious choice, and the least expensive choice, was painting. And boy - the entire home is getting a whole new look! While we did talk about some minor renovations, in the end, all this home is going to get (and need) is paint!
The Power of Paint: Foundation Palette
When looking at an entire home, the first thing I look at is the foundation palette. When my friends bought this home, there was a little bit of a mess going on with the foundation palette. The home has beautiful hardwood floors that really dictate the entire home. Due to the colouring of the hardwood, their foundation palette falls in the cream category. When they bought the home, all of the trim work was a screaming white. While the white looked ok against the dark grey/black front entrance tile, the majority of the home has warm hardwood. This is where we started.
Just so you know, I run into this ALL.THE.TIME. Often, people wish to update their home and think their trim needs to be white - especially if they wish to go with the trendy grey colours. That is so not the case! A home can be updated and get a total ‘refresh’ even with an off-white or cream foundation palette and still have grey! Just sayin’ :)
The Power of Paint: Kitchen Cabinets
Knowing that the foundation palette would be an off white or cream, and knowing the my friends were open to painting their kitchen cabinets, we looked at many off-white and cream whites. There are roughly 140 different whites but by narrowing it down to off-whites and creams, we were able to eliminate any blue-whites and true whites. The 3 fixed elements that were the driving force in choosing the right foundation colour were:
- the floors
- the kitchen backsplash
- the kitchen counters (black granite)
We continually narrowed down our choices by comparing, comparing, and comparing. Some samples were too white while some were too yellow. I told my friends it’s a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. While Goldilocks found one bed too hard, one bed too soft, she finally found the 'just right' bed. The same holds true when picking the best colours. Too yellow, too white….just right! In the end, we chose a cream white that was not too yellow and not too white.
This entire process took just roughly over an hour to pick. When you’re dealing with a trim colour, it should not be something you randomly pick. And please lord, do not just choose ‘Decorators White’ because the name sounds good. Guess what? Decorators White is a blue white! It takes a lot of time and comparing to get it just right! You screw up on this, your entire home can look ‘off’.
By deciding on the cream colour, all of the trim work (baseboards and casings) and interior doors would be painted the same cream.
The Power of Paint: Making it all flow
When the decision was made to go with the cream colour for the cabinets and trim, we ran into a little issue. Throughout the home, there are beautiful shutters on the windows. Guess what? They are screaming white!
In theory, they should be the same colour as the trim work. This is where we run into a situation (which I run a lot) where you have to do the following:
- Ignore the fact that they don’t match
- Make it look like they belong?
What are we going to do? A little bit of both. My friends were certainly not going to change out every window so we decided we were going to ignore them. However, we’re not going to totally ignore them. There are ways to make it look like cream and white go together. With some purposeful decorating, we’ll make those shutters look like they’ve belonged all along!
While the rest of the home is still being painted as I write this, I am so happy that my friends are thrilled with what’s been done so far. Painting will be done in a couple of days and their new carpet will be installed this week.
Above is a before picture taken by my painter. The bleached look will soon be gone as well as the yellow wall colour!
My painter does a fabulous job in preparing the site to be sprayed!
The after shot! Ahhhh....
Here’s the before and after kitchen side by side:
This ‘refresh’ project is going to take roughly 3 weeks (from start to finish) to get done. Amazing what can be done in 3 weeks!
