When it comes to building as house neither Lisa or I can claim to be aficionados of home decor or, style or anything, really. We both know what we like when we see it and luckily, we like a lot of the same things. We don’t really argue about much related to building the house. I hear that’s unusual.
While we are total suckers for HGTV (mostly Property Brothers and Fixer Upper), Houzz, Joss and Main or Wayfair (naming a few), we are not experienced enough to look at an empty room and just know color schemes, decor or things of that nature. Through this process we have been fortunate to get the help of friends and family some who actually have a real working sense of how to do all this stuff.
There are all kinds of selections we have to make as we go through the build. Some things are kind of easy because it really comes down to what we like. For example we knew we wanted dark floors with light trim and light cabinetry. When it gets put in, and if it turns out, I will post a story of how we accidentally picked our hardwood floors.
There does come a time however, where we get concerned with pulling it all together. Counter tops that will go with nearly white cabinets is easy and with dark hardwood, it isn’t like it won’t match. But now that we have picked those things, what color paint should we put on the walls?
For example, the fireplace wall has tile. That tile provided the colors for the mantel, hearth stone, cabinets and shelf colors. Even the wall behind the cabinets, as seen in the image below.
I created this rendering from the cabinet maker’s plans. We started with the tile and pulled colors from it to determine the colors of the elements around it. The tile is an actual photo of the tile. Also, the TV and the fireplace are actual photos of our selections. It should be pretty close to scale.
Those are bold colors and I cannot see how we can use them in the rest of the great room and kitchen. In the past we have agreed we would use mostly subtle and light colors in the great room and kitchen area. We love natural light and do not want to darken that area with heavier colors.
So here’s where the trouble starts… For whatever reason, probably because we see it so much in the examples we like, we are stuck on using only grays. Don’t get me wrong, I love gray and all kinds of variations of gray. However, I feel like we could end up with living spaces that might look a little dreary. There are hundreds of shades of gray. At present it seems we will using about 6 shades of gray.
Good thing it is only paint.
