Wednesday, May 23, 2012

50 Shades of Grey


Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m not talking about the latest mom-porn-book that is on millions of nightstands around the world. Although, HOLY-50-SHADES-OF-MOLY! Yes, the books are on my nightstand. And yes, I’m about to start book 3. Don’t judge.

I’m talking about grey paint people. For your house. It’s hard as shizz to pick out.

The biggest challenge with grey is that there’s blue-grey and green-grey. Some look silver. Some look brown. Or “greige” as they are calling it now. There are very few grey-grey’s. And that’s what I want throughout my entirehouse. Leave it to me to pick out the hardest color scheme there is. Our old house had a blue-grey color in thekitchen and upstairs bathroom…Mineral Deposit by SW. It was hard to tell if it was blue or grey onany given day, and I loved it, especially with my teal accent color on my chaircozies. So, that was my startingpoint. I knew that Mineral Deposit hadblue in it, so I went searching for colors that appeared greyer. Is that a word? More grey.

Well, my final selections turned out blue as crap. I even managed to pick out a black that looked blue. Ugh. Back to the drawing board. I bet I have a million paint chips in thishouse, all in different shades of grey and black. And in the end, I picked 3 that I absolutely love. Mindful Gray by SW, Dovetail by SW and Kendall Charcoal by BM. My problem? They don’t seem to be popular paint colors inthe design world. That knocks my levelof confidence down a bit. WHY? Why don’t people use these colors a lot???









At this point, the majority of the upstairs has been painted. 4 Shades of Grey. I played around with Mindful Gray and did it at 50% in an extra bedroom. That’s always a good route to take if you like a particular color but think it’s too dark. I might do the 50% in my masterbath downstairs now that I know I like it. We shall see.



My biggest nail biter was the doors. All of my interior doors (minus closet doors) are Kendall Charcoal. I was nervous as hell to make the move. Doors are not fun to repaint if you screw up. But, I LOVEIT! It’s delicious….and as we speak,Will just announced that he thinks they are too light. Great. If I change the doors, I have to change the color of my kitchen cabinetsdownstairs. I’m anal like that.


I have a few more weeks until I have to make final decisions on the paint for the downstairs.  Which means I may have to redo some of the upstairs.  

Btw, what is the difference between GRAY and GREY??  Why's it gotta be confusing like that?

2 comments:

melanie said...

It all looks LOVELY and the doors are awesome!

Dixie Clip said...

Love it Mim! I just repainted our living room with SW passive gray but thought about using your mindful gray. I actually have a question for you, since you are the only designer I know ;) Can I send you photos of our living room fireplace and get your opinion on if we should paint and if so, what color??

-Lori