Back in 2003 when we bought our fixer upper in Old Town red was my favorite color. It was the color I selected for my bridesmaids’ dresses when we married in October 2002, comprised about a third of the clothes in my closet, and naturally, I wanted to feature it as a main color in our new home’s decorating scheme. 

Back in the early 2000s bold red dining rooms were all the rage and we thought it would look great in our Victorian home. To fulfill our dream when we renovated our dining room in 2004, after some deliberation, we landed on Behr's Red Red Wine as the hue of choice. We excitedly dove into the project, having no inclination of what lie ahead. One coat of headache-inducing bright pink tinted primer later, we were committed. We had no clue how hard would it be to paint a saturated red on our newly plastered walls.

Oh boy, were we DIY noobs. An excruciating one coat of primer and four coats of red paint later, we finally reached the desired color and our dark and dramatic dining room look was achieved. 

We loved the end result, but there was no denying the amount of effort to achieve this look was way more than we had bargained for. Red takes so many coats to get full coverage, and back in 2004 we weren't using higher quality paint, which only meant more coats.

As a result, I swore to Alex that:

• I loved the color
• It was well worth the effort
• We would only use high quality paint from that point forward
• And we would never repaint the room

This Red Red Wine dining room was certainly dramatic, and our guests frequently commented on the color. It was even on the cover of Old House Journal several years ago when they did a story on our house, talk about surreal. 

Fast forward roughly eleven years from when first painted the room and I had kept all of my promises. But the problem is that I was quickly falling out of love with our red dining room.

While the color looked great for the holidays and made for a cozy and moody backdrop for dinner parties, it also felt dark and oppressive during the day and especially during the spring/summer months. 

The paint itself also wasn't holding up well and had developed a chalky finish in places. For example, in trying to dust the walls or wipe off smudges, any area we tried to clean would then have a smeared, white residue. In short, not only was I ready to move past my red obsession, it was time to freshen up the space.

For the last two years I've been laying the groundwork, mentally trying to prepare my spouse for the inevitable project, knowing that I'd be met with resistance. I've hinted, hung color swatches, made passing remarks, discussed it while we ate dinner in the room, and generally commented on it for years. I even ordered a new chandelier this summer for the room, which fortunately was on backorder, as it allowed me more time to get him comfortable with the change.

And so, in my true "jump around" approach to DIY renovation, I decided I simply couldn't live another day with the red walls. Forget that Alex is elbow deep in our window restoration project, we were frantically preparing our master bathroom for a magazine photo shoot, had family coming into town for a visit, and were a mere two weeks from our annual Halloween party. This project was happening...NOW.

I fully admit the timing was terrible. For all of the reasons I mentioned above as well as the fact that we had just put out all of our Halloween decorations, thus substantially increasing the amount of stuff that we needed to move out of the dining room and subsequently cram into our adjacent living room while the painting was underway. I'm a total neat freak, so living in this type of chaos makes me crazy. 

After we cleared out the smaller items and artwork from the room, we applied a first coat to the walls using Benjamin Moore's Fresh Start interior primer. Alex tackled the cutting in, while I managed the rolling.

I also worked to choose a new color. My inclination is to go more gray (I've been on a SW Agreeable Gray kick lately), but in doing so knew that wouldn't work well with the beige tones of our living room sofa, rugs, and artwork. So I ended up choosing the more beige cousin of Agreeable Gray in SW's Accessible Beige. It's safe, a little boring actually, but it would work with the adjacent rooms, lighten up the space, and give us the fresh look I'm after.

After working long days, we were tackling the priming and painting each night without any natural light. On night two we put on the first coat of Accessible Beige, and we both hated it. It had more of a butterscotch look in that it appeared very yellow. Alex was very vocal about his dislike of the color, and internally I was freaking out. Why couldn't I leave well enough alone? Why didn't I buy test paint? Why didn't I go more gray? Why did I insist on starting this project now? What was I thinking??

We called it a night after the first coat was up and the next day I drove to our local Arhaus to pick up our new light fixture, the Hemisphere Geode chandelier in antiqued brass, which had finally come in. The box it was packaged in was enormous, and just barely fit in the back of our SUV which you can see in the photo below.

I excitedly unpacked the chandelier and placed it on the table, then we continued our painting efforts.

After we started painting the walls, unfortunately it became readily apparent that the trim paint had seen better days. Now 13 years in, it was scuffed and dingy, and we knew we needed to get a fresh coat on all the molding and fireplace mantel. Alex tackled this step, which added an additional day to the project, but it was well worth it.

While we both initially disliked the color after one coat, we kept going. We wanted to completely finish the molding and cutting in of the color before we rolled the final coat of paint. But once that second coat went onto the wall, it was almost immediately looking better. 

Full coverage of paint, no more streaks of visible primer, and with a fresh coat of trim paint on all baseboards, window and door casing, and crown, the whole room suddenly started looking more like I had envisioned. 

We both breathed a sigh of relief when it all started to take shape, then I turned my sights to installing the new chandelier. 

This new chandelier is a significant departure from what we typically have in our home, but I'm very excited about it. I love the geometric aspects to it and think the larger but transparent space it occupies actually makes the room look larger around it. The end result of our few days of effort painting, a new chandelier, and some inexpensive new curtains is exactly what I had hoped for when I nudged my cooperative spouse to start this project. 

Sure, he may be in the middle of a window restoration, and stripping a closet door, but the smile on my face is hopefully enough to convince him that it was well worth the unexpected (but completely expected) effort.

We still want to replace the rug, re-cover the chairs, find a less massive buffet, and Alex is pulling for a new dining table, but this room now feels less imposing and dark, and also appears so much larger with this lighter color. I hate to say it, but I'm actually looking forward to putting away the Halloween decorations so we can see what the room looks like without holiday decor draped on every surface. 

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As we mentioned in our first post in this series when we talked about how we spruced up our flower beds, this summer we've also decided to approach improving the curb appeal and address some deferred maintenance items of our American Foursquare home in three distinct phases.

1. Flower/planting bed beautification
2. Addressing exterior paint issues
3. Overall porch projects and paint

Yes, the exterior paint is the next major item on our list of projects, and boy is it needed. As you can see from the following photo, we have several examples where the paint on our siding had been compromised and was simply bubbling and peeling off.

This issue in the photo could been seen on all sides of the home's exterior. Alex even did a little bit of work last year to address some of the absolute worst sections on the front of the house.

Now, you know us as DIYers to the core, right? Well, we also like to fein that we're reasonable homeowners from time to time. When dealing with something that's a large scale project that requires many people to get it done in a timely manner, and would require a lot of work up high on ladders, my preference is to hire it out to the pros. As a result, when it came to painting our home (both now and when we last had our home painted in Alexandria), I look to a dependable painting crew. 

But before the crew could get to painting, we had some color selections to make, as well as some prep work we wanted to tackle ourselves.

The prep work included two significant elements. The first dealt with repairing and replacing some significant wood rot on the front porch decking and steps. 

Alex worked to repair those when we were working on the garden this Spring, and was able to install new boards where necessary to make the porch whole again. 

We also removed the handrails from the front porch because they were a soggy, rotten mess. We may build new ones at some point, but rather than get bogged down for the next several weekends building new ones, we decided to patch the railing and live without them for now to see how we like the look.

The second was the fact that there were many rotten pieces of siding that would need to be replaced when the painters came. But this isn't siding you can just go pick up at the big box. Oh no! This is 100+ year old siding that is flat, not beveled. It's 5-1/2" x 1/2", so not your standard size that you can go buy. As a result, Alex picked up a bunch of cedar boards that were all 5/8" thick, and planed them down to 1/2" to match the old siding profile and reveal. 

It was a ton of working running them through the planer (and then pre-priming all sides of the boards with oil-based primer), but it was work that was necessary to make sure the new boards looked appropriate with our existing siding. This, in and of itself, was a full day project, but one that was important to help correct the issues in the right way.

Next up, we had to make our color selections. This is one of those cases where you can often reach project paralysis at a fairly rapid pace. I was sure I wanted the overall color of the exterior of the house to stay white. Rather than dive down the rabbit hole of different shades of white, we kept it simple here and went with our painter's recommendation of using Sherwin Williams factory mixed bright white. That way if we ever have to touch up sections, we don't have to worry that the paint might be mixed differently than the color on the house.

The porch floor, porch ceiling, and the metal roof colors all needed more deliberation. We'd already painted our front doors Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue, and I love how that turned out, so I wanted to make sure I chose colors for the porch floor and ceiling that would complement the Wythe Blue. I certainly wanted to stay in the blue family for the porch ceiling, and opted for a shade lighter than the door, which is called Rainwashed by Sherwin Williams. We landed on this color after determining the equivalent Sherwin Williams color to Wythe Blue, and then moving one shade lighter on the chips.

When it came to the porch roof, which was installed with a factory hunter green finish, I wanted to find a shade that wasn't quite so green. The old paint had failed in places and was beginning to rust, so we wanted to get a coat of paint on it to protect it. This seemed an idea time to change the color to something we liked a little better. At the same time, the shingles on the upper roof are a gray/green/black combination, so I didn't want the metal roof making the upper roof color stand out. Really, I just wish the shingle roof was gray or black, but we're not replacing the roof anytime soon so we'll have to embrace it. My preference for a roof is to always use a dark neutral color when choosing shingles, so you never end up with this situation when you want to change things in the future.

We ended up choosing a very dark gray with the slightest hint of green to work with the upper roof. We used Sherwin Williams Andiron, and I feel like it really nailed the color I was going for. It has just enough of a green undertone that it works for the asphalt shingles, but it also tones down the green tremendously.

While the house, porch ceiling, and metal roof colors all came together pretty seamlessly, the porch floor has been a major saga. What we were looking for was to change the existing brown tone to gray. So we chose Sherwin Williams Chatroom. a gray with a hint of green to work with the roof color, selected off the same chip as the Andiron color for the metal roof. But after Alex repaired the rotten sections of the porch, and we put on the first coat, it ended up looking really green. Far too green for our liking. 

At this point, we knew we didn't like it but the painters hadn't started yet, so we decided to reserve judgment on the Chatroom color until after the rest of the house was painted (and it actually dried).

As far as the professionals go, our painting crew ended up spending a full week painting the house. They power washed everything, removed loose paint, repaired rotten boards, caulked where necessary, corrected splits and gaps, and generally made our house look 10 times better! 

It was amazing to see the house transform from slightly dingy with siding cracks to a clean and crisp historic waterfront home. As far as the porch floor is concerned, we ended up revisiting the color after we realized it wasn't the look we wanted (even with the new metal roof color). The Chatroom color worked with the roof, but when you're on the porch, you can't see the roof, and it just looks a little off. Though we'd already applied our paint to the front porch and steps outside the laundry room, we begrudgingly admitted we made a misstep. 

After a lot of back and forth, we eventually landed on Sherwin Wiliams Dorian Gray. It's more of a true gray, and after applying this color, I'm much happier with its look rather than a greige with green under tones. We still have a good amount of work to do on the porch, but here's a quick comparison between the Chatroom (lower stairs) and the Dorian Gray (upper stairs).

As much as I hated having to repaint, we forced ourselves to look at it as primer and a failed experiment. Even before the new color was dry, we already liked it better than the old.

We'll give you more updates on the porch in our next curb appeal post, as it's still very much a work in progress. But we're certainly headed in the right direction.

Driving up the driveway is a wonderfully welcoming introduction to our home. The fresh white paint is classic and just looks like it could have looked over 100 years ago. And if you're seeing our home from the water, we decided to add a little patriotic flair to our facade in celebration of Independence Day.

The new roof color is far more neutral and looks great with the upper roof. While we won't be changing the relatively new shingle roof, the new dark gray color on the lower roof balances the green and makes the coloring on the shingles far less apparent, which was exactly my goal.

But I think my favorite part of the whole project is probably the porch ceiling. The Rainwashed color we used is exactly how I was hoping it would look. The painting crew sealed it all up and painted/filled any significant cracks. And, at least for the next few weeks, all of the spider webs and bugs that usually collect on the porch ceiling, are all gone.

Our curb appeal's second step is complete and looking great. We still have a lot of work to do to repair and spruce up our porches, but a freshly painted house is a huge weight off of our shoulders. We'll be working over the next several weeks to address these larger porch issues. While it won't move along nearly as quickly as the house painting project with a large crew, I think it will be just as impactful. 

Hope you have a wonderful Independence Day if you're from the States, and happy 150th to our Canadian readers. Have any projects on your list during your days off, or are you using the time for a little bit of relaxation? 

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We're not new to this DIY game and understand the amount of time it can sometimes take to feel like you're actually getting somewhere on a project, but at times it can be hard to remember just how it feels to transform a space when the transformation takes a long time to come to fruition.

Several weeks ago I shared with you my tendency to "convince" us to jump from project to project when my impatience (and feeling we're lacking progress) begins to mount. Though we have several ongoing and long term projects we're working on, I really felt like I needed a quick win to jump start my energy on our renovation. The inspiration to make this switch in priority came thanks to an offering of help from my parents, who offered to do some painting and help us move forward.

With the promise of help we whipped into high gear on prepping our new home's office for painting, and acquired all of the necessary supplies in anticipation of my parents' arrival. When the day came we all piled in our cars and headed to the house with thoughts of paint brushes dancing in our heads. While Alex finished up sanding and doing a final coat on all of the drywall patches, my parents and I began the time consuming task of priming everything in the room.

Personally, when I think of painting I often think of the quick and usually low cost but major impact of change a new wall color can bring to a room. Unfortunately, it's way too easy to forget the amount of time and effort this often takes. Between sanding and patching holes, getting the walls prepped for paint, priming, carefully cutting in around all of the trim, giving yourself adequate dry time, and making sure your brush marks all go with the grain of the wood and do not leave drips, before you know it you've invested many hours with your fingers crossed that you'll like the color when it's done.

In the case of our office room, we had quite a lot to paint. There was the beadboard wainscoting, the walls, the door casings, the four doors (including nine window panes in two of the doors), the stair risers, and the large built-in cabinet at the end of the room.

But let me tell you about something magical that happened as we started to paint. All of the work ahead of us started to simply melt away as we began to cover that old golden yellow wall paint and stadium mustard brown trim color. It sure didn't hurt that we had my parents in to move it forward more rapidly.

As the primer went on I immediately began to feel a tremendous sense of excitement for what this could become, and this was only primer.

At this point I started to realize just how bad this room has been making me feel. This is the first room we walk into when we arrive at the house, and the last room we leave. And the truth is, I've always really hated how it looked. Stained carpet, dated wall colors, holes in the walls, little natural light, and a weird smell every time we entered the house. It's simply not a welcoming space.

As we continued our efforts to prime and paint, all of those less than desirable traits in the room slowly gave way and the room began transitioning into what may become my favorite room in the house (at least for the time being).

We painted with my parents well into the night, covering every surface in the room in a coat of high hide primer, and even started on the first coat of trim paint on the casings, doors, and wainscoting.

My dad was set up in the room upstairs to work on all of the built in's shelves, doors, and any other removable pieces that needed to be covered.

I continued working with my mom in the room to cover the beadboard, walls, stairs, doors, and built ins.

Alex kept working to get everything sanded and patched just before my mom and I would swing through with paint. During the process Alex took a look at the handrail installed on the back stair. In his words, "it was janky." To be honest, I had been focused on the room as a whole and didn't even notice just how bad the handrail was. Once the white primer started going on I saw that the handrail would detract from the whole room.

The whole thing was supported by a 2x4 screwed into the upper stair opening trim and lower panels on the side of the stairs. It was very crooked and swayed when pushed. As a result, it had to go. Removal was a snap and Alex began hatching plans to build a newel post and handrail later.

By the time Alex and I left at 1:00am to head back to Alexandria, we could see it coming together, in spite of the very dim light.

Alex needed to be in the office the next day, but my parents were staying for the week to do a mix of relaxing and painting everything except the wall colors. While we went back to Alexandria to work, we periodically received updates on their progress. Every photo we received made me even more excited to return.

After my parents packed up and headed home, Alex and I headed back to the house to finish up the painting. I have to admit, I was positively giddy with excitement to get back and finish up the painting. Not only was the wonderful surprise of a nearly finished painting project waiting for us, but we were going to get to apply the wall color!

What wall color would we choose? How about Sherwin Williams' "Agreeable Gray"?

It's my hope that this whole house will be calming, welcoming, relaxing, and an embodiment of a waterfront cottage. Therefore we are planning to go with subtle grays through most of the rooms, with color and texture added through furniture and accessories.

Our painting process has changed little through the years. After priming we prefer to paint the trim with two coats first, then we move onto two coats of the wall color, starting with cutting in around the edges, then rolling the field. It's a tried and true process to complete it in an efficient manner and end up with a good looking paint job.

I also mentioned that we're using the White Dove trim paint from Benjamin Moore's Advance line. This is a waterborne alkyd paint and goes on with an extremely high gloss. As soon as we arrived we could see just how wonderfully glossy this trim paint actually is (in spite of the dim light outside).

I had to get a little creative when cutting in at the highest point of the two story stairwell wall since our ladder wasn't high enough to reach. 

A little painters tape and a ceiling rolling extension gave me just the reach I needed to get to area where the wall meets the ceiling upstairs.

In addition to painting the room we also started stripping the cast iron strap hinges that go on the small closet door under the stairs. The raw iron against the white time paint should look pretty amazing.

After several more hours of painting the whole room was really coming together.

It was tough to see the color while it was dark outside and the room was primarily lit by the work lights, so we went to bed wondering just how it would look when we woke up the next morning. Much to my delight, it looked amazing in the daylight. 

We still had a fair amount left to paint (like a second trim coat on the stair risers, utility room door, and window panes, but the vast majority is complete and I simply love it!

With most of the paint on the walls and trim we started to notice a lot of little gaps and cracks around the room that would need to be patched, like the gap at the back of the built-ins. We solved this little issue with a bit of scrap pine we had on hand. 

We also had to carry some of the painting up the stairs since so much of the wall is completely visible. Unfortunately, we needed to create a somewhat arbitrary line where the new paint ended.

After all was said and done we're nearing the end of this little update project, but we still have some pretty major steps left. Specifically, we are getting new carpet installed in the room, Alex still needs to build the newel post and handrail, we still need to finish stripping the hardware and reinstall the closet door, and I need to figure out decor for the room. But these final steps are the part of the process I love the most, and I can't wait to dive in! Oh, and the ceiling fan. Something needs to be done about that ceiling fan.

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This was a major moment of progress for our bathroom, and though we're not done yet, it went a long way to making our bathroom feel "complete." But in order to check this major step off of our list, it required something that's been in short supply for some time -- space in the basement to paint the doors and drawers.

While I had painted the vanity body in place in the bathroom using our HVLP spray gun, this was before the bathroom was a finished bathroom, so overspray and a cloud of paint dust hanging in the air wasn't a big deal. But now that we've got ourselves real walls, floors, and finishes, my only real option to paint these doors and drawers was in our crowded and hoarder-esque basement.

As you may already know, you really need a dedicated spray booth area for this sort of work. Somewhere that you can spray to your heart's content without the worry of dust and debris falling into your work. Also, somewhere you really don't care will get totally covered in paint. Many people setup a dedicated extra room in the basement, or a portion of the garage or shed for this duty, but in our house, no such space exists. The only thing we have is our complete disaster of a basement.

Well, our basement WAS a disaster, but I've been hard at work over the last several months cleaning up the basement. With the removal of our clawfoot tub (now in its correct location), a ton of trash taken away, the removal of our old hot water tank and partial wall, and a general effort to organize, it now looks halfway respectable. Sure there are still wood piles and doors all over the place, but now we can walk around and not feel like we'll be featured on an intervention show.

The best part of this cleanup effort is we now sort of have an opening large enough to be considered a spray area, but not without some modifications to make it a proper makeshift spray booth.

To create our own DIY spray booth, I went the most simple route I could, using a 25' roll of 4 mil by 10' clear plastic sheeting. Our basement ceiling is about 7' from the floor to the joists, so we had plenty of space available and the 10' plastic would allow adequate drape above and below the sheeting.

I started creating our paint booth in one corner by stapling the first corner up to the underside of the floor joist. I then continued working around in a horseshoe manner, placing key staples where I needed to support the plastic (and watching out for things like the water line and electrical wires. After just about 10 minutes of working, I had myself the beginnings of a DIY spray booth...or Dexter kill room.

I'll tell you one thing for sure, this process really made me appreciate the hard working set designers on Dexter. It must have been a pain to set up those murder scenes week in and week out. Plastic can be a cumbersome and static electricity filled material to work with!

Once I had my booth complete, I cut an additional pieces of plastic to overlap the edges of the end to work as a sort of door to the whole booth.

I also made sure to center one of our basement's fluorescent lights inside of our booth enclosure. I knew I'd need a lot of light while painting, and the last thing I wanted to do is struggle with temporary lighting inside of the booth.

While the staples were enough to hold everything in place temporarily, gravity is the enemy of plastic, and the sheeting would surely tear over time if I left it up with staples alone. To resolve this all I needed to do was use a piece of the countless pieces of scrap lumber in the basement to act as a rail for the edges of the booth.

This allows the weight of the plastic to be more evenly distributed so it doesn't end up ripping on the pressure points of the staples.

Finally, I hung a middle rail on the ceiling and attached several eye hooks that will allow me to hang items for painting.

The doors and two drawer fronts are a perfect example of items that needed to be painted while hanging. I had to paint all sides of the doors and didn't want any of them to be touching the ground while doing it. 

To paint these items I ended up hanging some leftover wire through the eye hooks and attached a hook to the back of the cabinet door, which allowed me to completely suspend the door without touching anything.

Overall this paint booth approach worked really well. Some paint still escaped from the enclosure, but only right at the opening down around the floor (but I think that's my fault for how I overlapped the plastic and how the hose for the sprayer got into the booth.

The best feature of this booth is how I was able to roll the whole thing up for future use. Using a few clamps I just gathered all of the plastic up against the ceiling and then clamped it to the rail board I'd affixed to the ceiling.

Now the basement is once again open and ready for use as a makeshift wood shop. But the spray booth is just a clamp removal or two away from dropping down into place.

I know this isn't really groundbreaking stuff by any means, but it goes to show you how you can use a very tight space in many different ways. If not for our efforts to clean the basement, and to set up this spray booth, we'd still be waiting on a finished vanity. Now, what else does Wendy want me to spray in our basement booth? I'm sure the list will end up somewhat long now that we have this capability.

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My initial hesitation in getting to know this boy a bit better had nothing to do with the long and thick brillo pad he called hair peeking out of the sides of his grimy backwards baseball hat, like the wings of a disheveled flightless bird. Nor was it the surplus 30 pounds he was carrying around thanks to too many drive through trips where his order involved the words "double" and "Super Sized," all courtesy of the newfound freedom that comes with a drivers license, his mom's station wagon, and the financial freedom of working in a shopping mall athletic shoe store. 

Though this would have been enough to steer most females from this brightly colored peacock, my lack of interest and attraction stemmed from the fact that this guy could barely muster a simple "hello" or a second of eye contact when we were first introduced. 

Instead I got some lame caveman grunt that barely resembled the word "hey," accompanied by a stammering head-nod. You know, the one that guys give other guys with the obligatory, "'Sup, dude?" The conclusion drawn? This guy has zero personality, and P.S., why does he think growing his hair out for dreadlocks is a look that will read as cool whether on or off the soccer field?

It took months of getting to know him in group settings, trying to fix him up with a close friend, and getting dumped by a friend of his before I started to pay attention to his sense of humor, generous spirit, wicked smarts, and fun loving personality. Here we are a year later, after I started thinking he was the greatest boyfriend on the planet. Not bad for a rebound boyfriend.

The point of my tale of high school romance? I don't fall in love easily, but when I do, it's for real and it's for keeps. Whether it's my mate in life, a home we're purchasing, a major career change, or even buying a new piece of furniture, I don't typically move quickly. 

But when I was recently introduced to a new (to me) paint color, Benjamin Moore's Wickham Gray, I was instantly smitten.

Now I know you might be thinking "Oh man, yet another blog spouting off about the virtues of gray as a fad based neutral palette with pops of color...blah blah blah." Honestly, I don't think of gray as a fad in the least bit. Gray has been around forever and this one, in fact, is one of Benjamin Moore's Historical Colors. As far as I'm concerned, it's here to stay. You've always seen gray in some capacity when it comes to great design and you'll see gray on walls long after ombre and chevron have run their courses. But one thing is for certain, I definitely won't be talking about "pops of color," so don't worry there. So if you're thinking this about my newfound love, just hear me out and see if I can change your mind.

I recently listed a beautiful historic home for sale in Old Town, and I feel the home's owner/my friend (and now client) has impeccable taste. I absolutely adore her home and her sense of style. While preparing to put her home on the market, a few rooms received a fresh cost of paint, including the stairwell and upstairs hallway. It was at this point she changed my life by introducing me to this favorite shade.

In my book Wickham Gray is simply a gorgeous color that reads as pale gray with the softest undertone of sea glass (greenish blue) depending on the light. It makes for a stunning neutral in high traffic areas, but could also work well as a very calming color in a bedroom, bathroom, or on the ceiling.

In the case of this home, it perfectly complements her soft, muted color palette, and adds more interest than your standard off white, beige, or flat gray that is more commonly used in hallways.

The way this color plays in various light allows you to easily add texture through shadows or reflections while maintaining the crisp and calming color. Just look at how beautifully the Moroccan star lantern in the upstairs hallway casts geometric shadows on the walls. I'm totally obsessed!

After my previous paint fails (can anyone say mint chocolate chip ice cream sage in the family room or sunny side up gold in our bedroom??), I'm always on the lookout for beautiful, muted paint colors that work well in different spaces and play well in different lights.

Our deep red dining room has been looking a bit dated to me of late. Coupled with the fact that the paint we used was poor quality and never really stood up to our use of the room, it very well may be time to retire the red and move into something a little more soothing.

But that's a whole lot of work, a rather big commitment, and I'm not quite sure I'm ready to jump right into that project! Remember, I need time.

While I might drag my feet when committing to other areas in my life, I know this case of love at first sight is meant to be. While also subtle in personality at first introduction, I'm sure glad this color really speaks to me...and isn't sporting questionable hairstyle choices that might make me question my interest level.

Do you have a go to paint color that you use in your home? Maybe you've discovered a new favorite? I'd love to hear what shades make your heart swell.

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