I've mentioned that we
just moved to a new house, and are working on painting and decorating all over the place. I've spent enough money on paint already, and ended up with a couple colors that I'm not happy with, so I decided to do some mixing. I have a friend who has even more extra paint than we do, and generously offered a paint-mixing party so we could see what we could come up with together.
I had never done this before (take two or more gallons of paint, combine A with B and get a blended color), and somehow it seemed much more intimidating than necessary! Seems simple enough, I guess--just mix the colors!, but I dunno, I guess I'm worried about matte vs. satin vs. eggshell finishes, and the paint not being stirred enough, or whatever. Have any of you ever attempted this?
We started by separating the paints by finish, but eventually just mixed satin enamel with eggshell enamel and matte, or whatever, and hopefully it'll work out. We had a lot of fun with lots of color combinations! But it's funny, despite the 10 or so paints we had, we got mostly blues and greens that began to look pretty similar after a while.
I was indecisive about the color I wanted, but I want to find a color for the bathroom that I like. The house was built in 1928, so I want something kind of vintage-ey, but also contemporary enough that I can put IKEA fixtures and things in. I was open to blue, green, aqua, or pink. It's hard to find a pretty color that doesn't look too old-fashioned, though... I had fun looking at historic and vintage bathrooms on this fun site,
Antique Home Style, which has galleries of ads and other pictures from homes 1900-1960s. Check out some of the
bathrooms from the '20s... some of them are very cool, and some are just funny! A lot of strong colors, though, not the pastels like a lot of today's bathrooms.
I like the general color we came up with, but I think I want it about four shades lighter, unfortunately. I'm afraid it will be too strong in the bathroom! Although there is a lot of white in there, also. Here's the color, and below it, the color mixed with a little (not enough?) white in a smaller patch.
What do you think? How much white do I need to add before it's usable? Or, does the bold color work for a house with a bit of historic, a bit of modern design? Some of those 20's bathrooms have super saturated colors. I'd love your thoughts!
I personally love the color you came up with! I really think grey-blue colors are gorgeous. Paint your feature wall the color you have and if you think it would be too dark for the whole bathroom lighten it and paint the remaining walls with the new color.
ReplyDeletei love these colors! i've been really itching to paint the room near our deck a bright, saturated green (similar to the brightest one on your little test board there).
ReplyDeleteand never fear--if you have white trim, or wainscoting or something in the room, your bathroom should take it like a champ. old houses definitely take bold color well. ours was built in 1925, and i love how it wears bright hues so proudly!
Don't be scared of color! And small spaces actually look great with strong color. If it feels dark after you painted, ask yourself if it's the paint or the light. Sometimes in a bathroom the lighting just isn't enough (and you want good lighting if you are doing any makeup in there!)
ReplyDeleteI love the color, especially if it were combined with a crisp white trim. I've never combined colors before, but it sounds like a LOT of fun!
ReplyDeleteMy only worry would be having enough paint. cause if you run out it's not like you can go an buy more..
ReplyDeleteIf you want to add white I suggest you add the blue to the white, not the other way around. Depending on how much blue you have, you may have to add A LOT of white to lighten the blue.
ReplyDeleteAlso, don't worry about color matching. Most large hardware stores have color matching available. Good Luck!
You can do the color matching at the store like Annie H pointed out, but aim to paint whole walls. If you are going to run out, don't do it in the middle of the wall! Because the light will inevitably change slightly depending on the plane, you can get away with minute differences. Besides as you age you start to loose the ability of discriminating between the bazillion blues in the universe. Sad, but true.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI just bought a gorgeous colour for my living room, and as usual I end up mixing it with white as the colours are normally very different on swatches or colour cards than in the actual room.
When mixing, always start off with the white paint and pour the darker colour into the lighter one.
Good luck!
I think the color is perfect! Accent with with lots of bright white!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a paint-mixing party! The colors you all came up with are great :)
ReplyDeleteDo you like stripes? Paint the bathroom in blue and green stripes and accent with crisp white trim and fixtures and silver leaf mirror.
ReplyDeleteWhen i want to change the color of a paint, I mix in artists' acrylic paint. It's best, since it is much thicker than the wall paint, to mix it separately with a little of the wall paint first.
ReplyDeletei live in a rather old house (about 130 years, auctually), and all of my walls are super saturated :) + white trim, and i love it
ReplyDeletei think your color looks great!
I painted my front door twice and still wasn't happy so I mixed the 2 colors and it came out perfectly. So far so good. I also did that in my parent's garage 10 years ago (Who wants to waste money on paint for a garage when you have 20 old cans around?) and it seems to be just fine. Have fun!
ReplyDeletep.s. I'd add a little more white--personal preference.
Great colour. How about just one dark statement wall and then do the others in a toned down version. I love jrnuerge's idea of stripes too.
ReplyDelete