My husband, with a Masters degree in painting and years of color theory (Goethe, Munsell, Itten, Albers), is a specialist when it comes to talking about and picking paint colors, whether for a canvas or the library walls. I'm more of a generalist and usually think of color in terms of food: aubergine, squash, butter yellow. Except when I fall back on my graphic design background and talk about CMYK or grab the PMS swatch book.
In practical terms this means we speak different languages. Every color choice over the last 22 years, from the paper and ink for our wedding invitations to the exterior paints for our houses to carpet, is a struggle; a struggle that begins with words. I say "eggplant;" he says "purple-brown." I gag. Over time we've learned that we are very close in the colors we're picturing but our descriptive language gets us in trouble.
To make life — and picking paint — easier on the two of us, we now forgo conversation and head directly to the Benjamin Moore swatch book (you can actually buy one at the paint store). We point to the colors we're thinking of and then use them as the basis for discussion. This time, however, we used Stephanie Hoppen's book, "Perfect Neutrals," as the starting point to come up with colors and combinations that appealed to both of us — and would work with our furniture, carpet, and art/objects/textiles.
We wanted three colors that would be similar in value and would work in harmony for the library walls (A), the entrance stairwell that leads up to the library (B), and the entrance foyer itself (C). But when we picked up a sample of the entrance hall floor tile, our paint choices fell apart and we had to quickly re-think them. We had been holding the tile color in our heads and we were way off. We pretty quickly re-thought the colors — at the Benjamin Moore paint store — and came home with three pint containers of color candidates.
Mark wisely saved a number of the boards from the old bookshelves we are replacing to use as color test boards. They worked well because we could move them around and they were long enough that you could see how the color looked with one end in shadow and the other end in light.
Our original choices are on the three central boards: Millington Gold HC13 (A), Norhthampton Putty HC89 (B), and Delray Gray 1614 (C). But I was not crazy about our combo once it was on the boards. I could see that even with new lighting, the stairs and front hall were going to be too dark, and too chopped up with two different colors. So I went in the basement and grabbed paint we'd used elsewhere in the house and made more test boards.
The board on the far right is Stormy Monday, which we used in one of our bathrooms, and I thought might work better than the Delray Gray for the front hall. But one gray was too blue and the other too lavender, so we ditched those colors altogether. Instead we decided to paint the stairwell and the foyer the same color, Coastal Fog (B, C). That's the board at the far left and is a color we used on one wall in the dining room that displays artwork. We'll keep our first choice, Millington Gold, for the library walls (A).
The side walls in the library will be Millington Gold. These bookshelves are only a memory. The wall across the back of the room we consider part of the stairwell and it will be painted Coastal Fog.
We are still going to have a third color, a warm gray called Woodcut, that we will use on the wall in the stairwell that faces you as you walk down. It's where we're building a display shelf out of cherrywood and plan to use the area to showcase art.
Over the years of painting the inside and outside of two houses, we've finally learned how to talk — or not talk — about color. But just as important, we know to never pick any color without making sample boards to be sure it looks in reality like it did in the magazine or paint chip. And lastly, keep good records of all the paint you've used. It only took me a minute to come up with the brands, names and i.d. numbers of the paints we've used for ceilings and trim in the rest of the house, so we can use the same in these areas. Next year it will be time to paint the outside of the house and we can easily replicate the colors because of our folder of paint chips and notes.
The side walls of this stairwell and the entrance foyer below will all be painted Coastal Fog. The wall with the indigo textile will be Woodcut, a warm gray (not shown on the sample boards).
