Yesterday, after the flooring guys left for the day, I went into the walk-in closet and gave the walls two coats of primer so that I could test out some paint colors. As I hinted yesterday, I’ve decided to go a different direction with the paint color for that room.
The last time I talked about paint colors, I was pretty sure I wanted to go with a coral color for all of the cabinets. I was pretty sure that one of these two paint colors would be the one. The darker one is Glidden Coral Serenade, and the lighter one is Glidden Sweet Angel.
But then my mom did a few mockups for me, and I’m so glad she did, because that changed everything. The coral with the wallpaper just didn’t look right at all. The problem is that the main warm color in the wallpaper is pink. The coral gets lost in the pattern and doesn’t really show at all. So the coral cabinets against the wallpaper with the prominent pink seem to clash.
And as many of you pointed out last time, the lighter I go with the coral, the closer I start getting to flesh colors, and that’s just…well…that’s definitely not what I want.
So my next choice was green since the wallpaper does seem to have quite a bit of green in it. But as much as I love green (which is hard to tell because I really don’t have much green in our house), I wasn’t loving this at all. Again, it seemed to compete with the wallpaper for attention rather than complementing the wallpaper.
But then we started getting into some colors that seemed to work with the wallpaper a bit better. The first one was more of a light aqua color. I liked it much better than the previous colors, but it seemed too green for the wallpaper. The most prominent color in the blue/green hue from the wallpaper is more of a blue rather than aqua. So while it was better than the previous colors, it still wasn’t quite right.
She sent two more, and the bluer they got, the more the color seemed to sing with that wallpaper. It started looking like they were harmonizing together rather than singing in completely different keys.
This is the final one she sent me. And as much as I had hoped for a closet painted in a color that packed a punch, I had to admit that when seen in a mockup, this was actually my favorite. The cabinets in this color would play a secondary supporting role and let the wallpaper be the star.
So with my wallpaper in hand, I headed to Home Depot on Saturday to look at paint samples. I walked away with a stack of colors, but I narrowed them down to two pretty quickly. The first one is Behr Clear Vista. Here’s the sample pictures from the Home Depot website.
And the second one is called Tahoe Blue. This one has a bit more blue to it than the Clear Vista, which has a touch more gray to it.
But before I could test out my samples, I needed to cover over the mural in the room. I wasn’t sure how many coats of primer I would need to cover it, but I was pretty sure one coat wouldn’t do it. And sure enough, one coat wasn’t enough.
It covered the area that was just bare drywall and drywall mud really well, though.
So I ended up having to do a second coat. The second coat covered it really well. I have a feeling that one coat of primer and one coat of paint would have covered it very well, but since I wasn’t actually painting the room at this point, I just needed to get the mural covered with two coats of primer. I wasn’t concerned about those marker lines from the mural bleeding through since I had used acrylic markers to draw the mural.
Once the second coat was dry, I painted the two samples on the wall, with the Clear Vista on the left and the Tahoe Blue on the right.
Lighting makes a huge difference, and the lighting in this room is pretty poor right now. I’ll be adding lots more lighting to the room before all is said and done. So with the different lighting, neither of these colors looked exactly like they do on the marketing pictures from the Home Depot website.
But they’re still very pretty colors, and I think both of them look great with the wallpaper.
Since I took those photos late last night, I was anxious to see what the paint colors would look like once the sun came up this morning and the room had some natural light coming the window. I took these pictures this morning…
The two colors are very similar, but I can tell that the Clear Vista on the left is a bit grayer, while the Tahoe Blue on the right has a slight bit more blue in it. It still doesn’t look like the marketing picture of the kitchen, though. The picture of the kitchen seems to have a touch of green in it, which isn’t really showing on my wall.
Last night, I wasn’t convinced that I had a favorite. I thought I could pretty much flip a coin and use either one. But now I’m definitely leaning towards one over the other. I’ll be interested to read your thoughts! Clear Vista on the left or Tahoe Blue on the right? Or, should I flip a coin? 😀
FYI, I’m starting short, almost-daily updates on my YouTube channel. You can see today’s update here:
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
