Picking Paint

I thought that picking paint for our house would be very simple, but for me it has been beyond simple. I have only been picking one room at a time. We first went to home depot for our colors and we finally decided on Martha Stewart Paints. She had an amazing brochure that I found very helpful.

Double Sided too!

 I picked my first color from this brochure – rainwater – which is the color in our living room.

It took two gallons to paint the living room (2 coats). Then for the dining room I decided on a gray called zinc.

 I didn’t want too many different colors for the first floor so I decided that the front hall should be a gray but not as dark as the dining room because there isn’t enough lighting. This lighter gray, called nimbus cloud, will follow all the way up the stairway and down the upstairs hallway to keep it uniform. Its a very neutral color which will make it easier when it comes to picking out paint colors for the upstairs bedrooms. 

I think when the kitchen is ready to be painted I will choose a yellow but I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. Like I said though, the Martha Stewart Brochure was very helpful. It has tons of colors to pick from and she coordinates it for you. For example, the first color I picked out, the Rainwater has a symbol next to it (*). To find out what colors would look best with it I just have to look for that symbol next to the color. The other good thing is that the Martha Stewart Paint happened to be on sale when we went to home depot and we were able to get it for $19.00 a gallon which is fairly inexpensive. If your worried about the chemicals in paint, Martha Stewart's paint is low VOC which means that it does not have a lot of volatile organic compounds. Volatile organic compounds are variety of chemicals that can have an adverse affect on your health. I have also heard that Sherwin Williams sells paints that has zero VOC in it. If your unsure about these fumes you should be safe and wear a mask! I know I did!