A MILLION COLORS, A MILLION TESTER POTS...

The Gorgeous Neutrals

Palettes you can live with...

The forecast is for neutral rooms with fresh pops of color...

but I'm fine with these soothing

far less exciting sweet slumber rooms...

the color stories are soft...

neutral ..

soothing...

with some contrasting accents

just so things don't get boring...

no bright pops in these rooms

but they still feel modern

crisp

clean

sleep inducing

this is not your mother's room...

When using these soothing colors in a bedroom, 

remember to bring in some contrast - in darker fabric

in reflective shine

and you can deepen that soothing color for a little drama

okay, maybe not a bedroom - but I love this color!

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Please can you help!! I have been through a million tester pots and nothing seems quite right to go with our carpet. The carpet is called 'Cameo'. It's a pain because it seems to change color every time you look at it! Cameo carpet seems to have pinky, beige, tan  and cream in it.

I am looking for a warm gray. We have already painted everything in Ben Moore natural linen and Ben Moore Finnie but  both look really green against the carpet so has to be repainted. Please help as I don't want to make another expensive mistake...the painter is waiting on me to decide!!!

I'm afraid I've kept you waiting - but the nature of my business is such that I can't always get to the reader's questions as quickly as I would like.  Gotta pay the bills ... I take care of my clients first - both long distance e-clients and local clients.  Sometimes that makes you wait a while for an answer - especially when life sits up and smacks you a couple of times to add to the drama - so I hope that this information is still useful to you.

You need a gray without the green undertone.  Undertones are sneaky little beasts that are often hard to see, especially in the paint store's fluorescent lighting.  With the peachy, pinky, beige of your cameo colored rug, you need a good cool toned gray on your walls.  

You should also put your sample color on a poster board with a good 2-inch white margin around the edge to stop the influence of the current wall color from effecting your sample.  It will also allow you to move it to your carpet to see how it reacts.  

Here are a couple of colors for you to try that don't have a green undertone...  but try a sample first - colors react to too many factors to rely on a photograph..

Martha Stewart - Newsprint

Very light

(great with peaches and pinks and beige)

Benjamin Moore Belmont Gray

 

Benjamin Moore - Arctic Gray

Ashwood - Benjamin Moore

Classic Gray - Benjamin Moore

Hello,

My living room is gray owl which I love, and I am trying to decide what color to paint the adjacent dining room, which is visible from the living room. I noticed your suggestions of sea haze and another gray color on your blog, but wanted to know if you had any other suggestions that weren't gray? I do want to keep it neutral and airy though.

Thanks!

Angela

So when you say 'not gray' - do you mean real gray as in white added to black.... or one of these shades...

because nearly every color has a gray

and the grayed down tones of these colors are 100% more livable, less saturated, more soothing

more enduring over the course of the years...

hard to believe these are all grays... right?

Here are a few colors I think may look good next to Gray Owl (only a swatch on your wall in your own room and light will tell)...  I will try to avoid any color that says 'gray' too strongly, but these colors are all grayed down a bit.

Benjamin Moore GRANT BEIGE

Benjamin Moore GUILFORD GREEN

Benjamin Moore PALLADIUM BLUE

Benjamin Moore TRANQUILITY

 Good Luck!

WALL COLOR AND WOOD TONES

MAKING THEM ALL HAPPY

Most of us have wood tones in our home.  If not on the floor, then as furniture or kitchen cabinets.

While wood isn't considered a 'color' in your color palette, their tones do need to be considered.  Wood can have red, brown, yellow or in some cases, gray tones.  

Red toned woods, like mahogany or cherry look great with cooler wall colors - cool greens, blues and grays, and gray toned beiges.  Yellow toned woods, like oak, also do well with greens, grays and purple tones.  Dark woods can handle both cool and warm tones.  If you have a mix, a grayed down neutral may work with all the wood tones.   When in doubt, choose the wood tone you have the largest amount of, or the most dominant and find a color that makes it look beautiful.

BEACH HOUSE NEUTRALS

Sometimes I feel that we are overdone here in the OC.  We have the ocean close by, the warm sand between our toes, ocean breezes to cool our summers, palm trees punctuating our neighborhoods and a surf board in every garage - but our homes look like carbon copy Spanish villas with red tile roofs and stucco walls and our interiors bear no resemblance to the coastal region we pay so dearly to be near.