It’s my understanding that painting each room in an apartment a different color is a no-no, in terms of flow, so I’m wondering how many colors to use in a two-bedroom.
I’m definitely a fan of bright/vibrant colors, so I don’t want it to be jarring as you move from room to room. I know I want the living room to be blue (along these lines, maybe a bit darker), but don’t know where to switch it up.
I’m attaching a very MS Paint, not-to-scale floorplan and a picture of the main room w/kitchen ahead and mini hallway w/bathroom and bedrooms to the right. Any thoughts, if my question even makes sense? Thanks!
Gentle Reader, your question is so timely! My March House Beautiful popped through my mail slot the other day, and this is the cover:
In wanting a blue living room, your finger is on the pulse of interior design trends, and you didn’t even know it. Good for you!
When people – myself included – generally say not to paint each room a different color, we mean a different strong, vibrant, totally unrelated color. If all the colors are soft, or all the colors are variations on green, etc., of course you can have different colors in different rooms.
One of the reasons the blue works in your inspiration picture is that there is also brick in that room. It breaks things up.
You do not have brick. But have no fear, Gentle Reader. I have an alternate plan. It’s pretty bossy, but I’m not going to waste time on a tame solution for you.
1. Choose the blue for the living room. Because you don’t have a brick wall or other break-things-up device, let’s make the blue a bit lighter than your inspiration picture. We’ll keep it vibrant, though – these are not subtle colors.
Turquoise is Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2010, but I have mixed feelings about that…let’s just find a blue with some warmth in it and call it a day.
You might like Benjamin Moore’s 2066-40 Rocky Mountain Sky. 2060-40 Toronto Blue has a little more aqua in it, although it’s hard to tell on screen.
2. Keep the trim (and ceiling, believe it or not) stark white. That will make the room feel pop-py and fresh. If the apartment was painted recently, you might be able to get away with not painting the trim or ceiling again.
3. Paint the other rooms in your apartment white. Ben Moore’s Super White is a favorite of mine.
4. Use the long, unbroken wall in each bedroom (opposite the door) as an accent wall. You’ll have the intense color, but not the panic attack associated with rooms that OD’d on saturated color. Here’s the really important, bossy part: use blues or blue-greens. They can be darker than the LR. Look at:
– 2056-30 Surf Blue
– 2066-20 Evening Blue
– 2067-30 Twilight Blue
– and, what the heck, 2045-20 Lawn Green.
This will give you some continuity and edginess while not turning your apartment into a cave.
You might want to try Benjamin Moore’s Natura paint, by the way. If you don’t have grubby-fingered little children running around, you may not need Aura‘s scrubbable properties, but Natura is still zero-VOC.
(Warning: those links have sound. Not obnoxious sound, but sound. Just in case you’re supposed to be doing something other than reading bossy blog. Hard to imagine that anything could be more important, but…)
Good luck, and let us know what you decide!
P.S. I would like bossy blog’s Gentle Readers to know that I wrote this blog entry while my 5-1/2 year olds were blasting Lady Gaga downstairs. Mostly Telephone and Bad Romance. Over and over. So if you hear a disco beat in the background of this entry, that’s why.
