Watching flowers on the wall (that don't bother me at all)

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I've been spending some time mulling over what to do about my bland hallway, which is trapped between two fairly vibrant colors.

I came up with a few different ideas for what to do with it, ranging between adding a third vibrant color, using a very light neutral, or something in between.  I have this little toy from the Benjamin Moore website that I downloaded to play with prospective paint colors, so I thought this would be a good use for it.  One caveat: this is a pretty crude tool, so one thing I've learned in using it is that the actual colors that show up in the edited photos are not a good representation of the true color that you would see on a paint swatch.  So you'll just have to trust me that I won't pick some horribly ugly color :)

First I started with a couple of neutrals.  One of my ideas was to make it a crisp white to go with the trim that's throughout the rest of the floor.

Pretty good - but maybe too much white?  What if it was a really light version of one of my color scheme colors, either the orange or red?  This color is a super-light orange and is called Gerbera Daisy.

I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of this.  It might be all right as a color, but the off-white doesn't make it quite as crisp and modern as maybe I'd like.   So what if it was a nice burnt orange?

This pic above is a good example of my color caveat from above.  You can see the little swatch in the lower left corner is closer to the color I'm really interested in, but the way it shows up on the walls with this tool looks a little too neon.  Setting that aside and assuming it showed up as the color I really wanted, I still feel like maybe it's a bit much.  Combined with the green and the brown, it feels a little claustrophobic.

So then I took a different approach.  If you remember from my previous post, I had been toying with the idea of a stencil on the wall...  Sounds a little crazy, but I had seen something really awesome using a stencil on my favorite blog, so I thought it was worth considering.  The only issue is that doing a stencil would require me to take down the Asian scrolls that I had hanging up on the walls in the hallway in order to open up some visual space.  (BTW, I wish I could be more specific than "Asian" - I got them at a Japanese fundraising dinner, but they look more like Chinese art that I'm familiar with.  Racial.)  But change is good, right?  So I played with that a little bit.  Here's the walls as a blank slate with all decor removed.

In thinking about the stencil idea, I had the colors of burnt orange and white in mind, but was kind of undecided as to which one should be the background, until I did that little experiment above with the orange on the walls.  Even with a stencil to break up the intensity of the orange, I think it still might be too much.  So I decided to use white as my test background color for this idea.

Now where to get stencils?  Well, based on this blog post from Young House Love, I found this website that sells such things (www.cuttingedgestencils.com) and perused the options.  So many!  You could get stencils that were allover graphic prints (kind of like wallpaper), stencils that were like branches coming down from the ceiling, giant standalone flowers, all kinds of cool stuff.  I found that the ones I gravitated to were stencils that evoked flowers kind of growing up out of the trim on the bottom of the wall.

So using my really *awesome* Paint skills, I mocked up a little picture of what one of these things might look like.

I think there's other exciting possibilities for this too, with variations on the orange color - could be lighter, darker could be an accent color, whatever - and variations in the height of the flowers.  Soooooo, based on this little experiment, I think I'm definitely interested in pursuing this stencil idea.  Exciting!  It'll be kind of an artsy challenge, and will add some interest to an otherwise really boring area of the house.  There's still a lot more thinking to be done and decisions to make on this before I can get started, but at least now I've got a general direction to move in.

Painting update!

So much painting fun!  Well, okay, that's slightly sarcastic.  I mean, seeing the results of the painting has been fun, but it's been a long, sometimes tedious process.  I kind of decided - without quite realizing I was deciding - to do the whole thing myself, instead of rounding up some friends to help.  It's been really satisfying in many ways, because it's been ALL my work, and I can do it on my own schedule, and make my own mistakes.  But the flip side is that it's taken probably a couple months when it might have taken a weekend.  (And truly, I'm not even 100% done yet.)

Anyway, I've finally finished off the brown on the long wall where the piano is, so that officially completes the parts of the main floor that I really wanted to deal with - the kitchen, dining area, and living room.  As usual, I shot a few before pics, because I know how much you want to dwell on that meh-colored beige.

Yeah.  Just as awesome as I remembered it (not).  And after:

So here's what the living room looks like with all the brown up.  It really makes it kind of nice and warm-feeling without being too dark. 

And the lovely green kitchen, all Giggled up:

Still really loving that crazy color.  So now the question is...what to do about that pesky hallway.  You know, this one?

Bland as bland can be.  So now that I've got the two sides of it painted, I'm debating what to do about the old beige that's still the original color.

I think there are a few different ways to go with this, so I've been soliciting ideas from various people I've talked to this week.  I don't think I can continue with either the green or the brown because it's such a small, window-less space, and I think either of those might be too overwhelming.  So I think it has to be a third color, which could be one of these options:

• Leave it the way it is - it's not absolutely horrible, after all - just kind of blah
• Find a different neutral beige, but one with a little bit more warmth
• Paint it white - but maybe that's too much white with all that trim?
• Find a neutral that's a super-light version of the orange or red in my color scheme (below)

• Paint it with a burnt orange kind of color - not quite as bright as the one in the color scheme, but bold
• I saw a post on my favorite blog today about stenciling on walls, and I must say that kind of caught my attention...maybe there's a way to do a nice bright color, but soften it with a light stencil?  Kind of create a modern wallpaper effect without the hassle of actually putting up wallpaper?

Lots of exciting possibilities to think about!  So I think I'll be mulling that over for a while, and just trying to live with it, assuming that eventually a good idea will reveal itself.   I'll keep you posted when it does.