Paint your wagons

Now that it's getting gloriously warm out, it's time to start working on The Big Plan, which mostly involves a lot of painting.  To refresh your memory, here's the color scheme I'm interested in for the main floor:

There are many possible variations on this general idea, but the master plan is to paint the walls brown, the built-in bookcase white (possible accent color on the back wall?), and then have a green accent wall somewhere in there.  To kick things off, I figured I should start the process of narrowing the options for the brown, because there's A LOT of directions this could go.

First, a word on the subject of brown walls.  I know it's not for everyone, and I would not say I'm completely without doubt about whether it will work or not.  It could totally fail, and be too dark, etc, etc.  But I figure that brown is one of my favorite colors, and if I'm getting something that at least I like, it can't be that bad.  And if it IS that bad, well then, you just repaint.  So wish me luck (even if you don't like my choice)!

My official color consultant Erin Jude and I (and her daughter Etta) spent a lovely afternoon mixing and matching and taping paint chips up on the wall.  We finally narrowed it down to one or two that we were most fond of.  I then took those chips out again to the paint stores and picked up samples of the original two, then added a couple more new ones to the mix whose chips appeared very close in color. 

I painted all these lovely browns up on the wall in three different places to get a sense of what they would look like in different areas.  Because it's meant to cover basically a whole floor, it has to work in a lot of different light.  First, here they are on the wall in the dining area.  (In each of these pictures, including the pictures taken near the bookcase, the four colors are arranged in the same order top to bottom).

Then, on the wall in the corner near the front window and the built-in bookcase.

It's kind of crazy how different they look at different times of the day, right?  I've now narrowed it down to definitely the top two, and am pretty much almost decided on the brown that is at the top of the column.  Which just happens to be the original one that Erin and I picked out!  I'm in love with the biggest green square (called "Green Giggle") on the big color scheme chip, and I think that looks nice with this brown, so I'm determined to use it on a wall somewhere.  Exactly where remains to be seen.

Before I actually start any of the brown walls, I'm first working on painting the bookcase white to match all the trim in the house.  I think it'll brighten up that corner a bit and make the bookcase pop more instead of blending into the wall.  Once that's done, I'll start painting the brown on the walls.  If that goes okay and I'm still liking the look, then I might go back and put some kind of accent color on the back wall of the bookcase - I'm thinking orange....