Paint fumes.

We finally did it! Something I've wanted to do to our house since day one. Paint over all of our icky semi-gloss painted walls.. which by the way..the semi-gloss was painted throughout the entire interior of our home. The two guest bedrooms were painted right after we moved in but everything else has remained the same...a blah neutral color in semi-gloss. And well..after two years of living in our house, a bazillion paint swatches, a few minor headaches, crossed eyes from staring at said paint swatches and many google image searches later...it's done. yiippee! And man...picking out paint colors is quite the job. It can be a bit intimidating when there are literally a trillion shades of one color and a little scary because you are committing to this color for quite a while. Of course..you could always paint over it if you don't like it but who wants to go through all of that effort? Not me. I'm way too lazy.

So.. I thought I'd pass along a few things/tips that helped me overcome my commitment issues.

Sherwin Williams color visualizer: It's awesome! You can upload a picture of the room you want to paint and then drop in any of the swatches on the screen and it will virtually paint the room. Also, if you're too lazy to upload a picture (like me) just click on any any of their living room, bathroom, bedroom images and drop in a swatch. Of course..it's good to remember that every computer monitor is different and the color will not be exact. But it's a good jumping off point. Check it out here.

Tape: Tape is your friend. I taped up quite a few paint swatches in each room we were having painted. The color will look a bit different depending on the time of day since the lighting in the room changes throughout the day. Make sure to check out the swatch during different times of day. I like to live with my swatches for a while.

Google images: After we narrowed down our color choices I then typed in the names of the paint colors in google images. Lots of rooms popped up which were painted in that color. It was really nice to see the color in a variety of real rooms.

Paint Samples: When we finally narrowed it down to the "finalists" I bought some paint samples and painted pieces of white cardboard (I used shirt boxes) which I then taped up on the walls and simply lived with them for a while, Again..checking out how the color changed throughout the day.

We went with all Sherwin Williams paint since it's good quality and also affordable. My first choice would have been Benjamin Moore but at $40-$50 a gallon it just wasn't happening. We actually ended up getting our Sherwin Williams paint at cost too. Score!

So here's what we went with. All of our new paint colors!! As you can see..I like pretty neutral colors. I'm really happy with all of them but I think my fave would be the comfort gray. It's such a pretty blue gray color. The swatch below does not do it justice.

Here's the comfort gray in a little area of our living room. We painted two accent walls with the comfort gray which is funny because I'm not typically a huge fan of accent walls...but because it's pretty neutral and goes well next to the khaki shade I really like how it turned out. Comfort Gray in action.. It's really neutral but you can see the contrast against the white baseboards. And here it is in our bedroom. Now I just need to figure out what to hang above our headboard. I'm thinking a sunburst mirror would be nice. I really like this one from Ballard Designs.. The bone color would be a great contrast to our espresso headboard. What do you think? Crossing my fingers that it goes on sale sometime soon. :) I'll share some pics of the other colors shortly. Happy Monday! xo