Ugly is Uninspiring
I experienced this first hand after we moved into a brand-new home. I loved the floor-plan and the finishes, but it was painted pink beige and I hated it! My husband just couldn’t see why we needed to repaint freshly painted walls. It annoyed me every day for two years. Finally, we painted it.
I looked through a lot of magazines and thought I wanted white like most of the houses in the magazines were painted. So, I hired the painters and they began to paint the walls white . . . but it had a funky green undertone! I told them to stop painting, so I could pick a different color and to come back the next day. I pulled out a fan deck and went to all my neighbors’ houses asking them what color their walls were and one of them convinced me I need to paint my walls a light gold. They assured me that it would be very neutral and go with all my furniture.
The painters came back and started painting it gold. They started in the foyer and it looked ok, but when they got to the kitchen which had a lot of natural light and Travertine tile, I could tell it wasn’t going to work. But I let them finish because I just wanted it done. I convinced myself that I could live with it.
Wrong.
Paint Colors Make a Difference
The “neutral gold” looked yellow and it clashed with the pink undertone in the Travertine. I hated it. Every morning when I came out of my bedroom I felt irritated and physically sick. I wanted to paint it again and my husband and I argued for a week about it. And then went to marriage counseling. No joke. But we repainted it. And I felt so much better! The new paint color made such a difference!
This experience made me curious as to how I could have picked the wrong paint color two times and made such a costly mistake. I began to dive into the field of interior design and did some research on color – which led me to a conference on How to Specify Color with Confidence where I became a Certified True Color Expert. Now I can walk into a room, identify the undertones of the fixed surfaces, and using my large paint boards, choose a paint color that will work perfectly in your home – the first time!
