Stone fireplace and wall color

airrikka · 11-12-2012, 01:54 PM

Hello everyone, having a personal crisis!
Here's a little background. We will start moving into our new house on December 1st. As with anyone who moves, the current decor is not right for me. I am a very color oriented person and I have zero fear in using bright colors on walls, which may or may not be a good thing. In my current house, I've done my neutral walls in a light gray. The only color for walls I have an aversion to is yellow which unfortunately happens to be the most common color in the house. Yellow paint or light just makes me feel bad for some reason. I also tend to lean away from earth tones and country decor.

There is a huge wall that extends from the room I'm turning into a library through the foyer and up the stairs that I want to paint light gray. The stone is clearly going to dictate what color I can paint. So what on earth can I paint the other 3 walls in the library? These pics are from the realtor, so ignore the furniture; it's not mine! The last pic at the bottom is the opposite side of the stone wall in the foyer and the continued view of the long, tall wall.

I have two possibilities I'm thinking about: this scheme or this mural over the current paint but the only available wall for that would be the big one that will be gray. Argh.

Any ideas at all?! I've fiddled with the color in Photoshop, but I'm still baffled. Also: I have a red couch that I'd like to put in the room, but it doesn't have to be there if it conflicts with what ends up on the wall.

So to sum it up, my 2 questions are: will the gray work for that big multi-room wall, and what can I put on the other walls in the room?!

sdsester · 11-12-2012, 06:50 PM

Sorry. I am having a little trouble visualizing the room. Is there a stone wall and another stone facade over a fireplace mantel? I guess it does not matter. But could you do a quick floorplan sketch and pass it on? If you want something computer generated, I use Sweet Home 3D for simple floorplans. It is free, open source software and can be as accurate as you choose to measure. Works showing relationships just guessing too. Others on this site like Google Sketch Up.

If you have not, you should set your monitor to 6500K which is the standardized color temperature for viewing and discussing color and it keeps everybody on the same starting page. It is especially important in sharing and considering neutrals like gray.

I see what you mean about lots of yellow! Yuck. In my work for clients I end up trusting a pixel grabber more than my own eye some times. But, the color balance on your photos looks off so I did not build you a color wheel or explore any charts. You seem savvy with color though so I will pass on the tool I use much of the time. I believe Color Impact from Tiger Color out of Oslo still comes with a free trial and a license is $40-50 or something. It is a wonderful program.

Anyhow, I would probably start exploring by pixel grabbing a specific gray you already have from the mortar or some color in the stone. The program will let you do all kinds of things like custom hue anchored color wheels (still the best way to know your color scheme options?) blends, schemes, noise and saturation explorations, value changes, etc. Your choice of color for the opposing wall may hide in these explorations somewhere?

The next step I use is to convert RGB color codes I develop in Color Impact into paint color. EasyRGB (www.easyrgb.com if memory serves me) is another great, free program. Type in the RGB color, pick a major paint collection, and the system will kick out the four nearest paint swatch names and numbers.

The last tool I use is a virtual painting program. I spec Benjamin Moore paints most so use theirs the most. Sherwin Williams and I suspect others have them too. It is free (if you want the machine and not online version you do have to download and install Adobe Air but it is free) and you can either pick a library photo close to your situation or upload your own photo, spend a bit of time masking off different paint areas, and then you can paint away---perhaps using the paint chip information you got from EasyRGB.

Anyhow, see if these tools help with a wall color selection or two and with incorporating your red sofa.

You might also want to play around with custom fabric of your own design to introduce color that way. A trend here is custom large output graphics for walls and some of the people who were doing vinyl vehicle wrapping are doing some amazing things for interiors. Sort of like custom wallpaper I guess but with more artistic license than conventional pattern repeats. I am thinking something more abstract than a literal mural would free you to explore use of graphics on other than that major wall?

While I have certainly worked with lots of architects and interior designers as a client and with them as clients, the only aspect of design I practiced in latter years was color. Keep posting your progress and thinking and I will be happy to help you tweak things if you do not mind airing our ideas in this public forum. When you can get them, some better and more accurately color balanced photos would help.

And by the way, and I have been harping of late, but the trend in lighting seems to be toward daylight temperature bulbs 5,000K or above. You must also make sure they have color rendering indexes 90 and close to 100 if you can. You do not want eery looking green people like the old flourescent bulbs used to produce because they had such poor CRIs.

Looks like you found a lovely home by the way. You might want to update your profile with basic geographic information so we know where you are?

airrikka · 11-12-2012, 08:02 PM

Wowie wow. Thanks so much for taking the time to respond! Looks like I have some work cut out for me. I'm gonna play with my monitor and the floor plan and get back with you. In the meantime, I do have an album of all the pictures from the realtor. I wish I could get some empty-house photos ahead of time with my own camera. I'd wanted to start painting the day after the sellers move out, but I suppose this is going to take longer.

Deciding the colors for the rest of the house should be easier for me, but feel free to suggest whatever comes to mind. As you can see, I have the same yellowy problem in the master bathroom (with the tub).
Also, I wanted to post the extremely primitive (hilarious) mock ups of how I might do some of the areas:

Kitchen table into living room (I like Turquoise/red/gray/orange/white for the living room)
Foyer 1 and Foyer 2
Kitchen (This is how my current kitchen is done... Gray/black/pink/purple/orange. I love it so much I want it in the new house)

Okay! Will be back. Thanks again!

sdsester · 11-12-2012, 09:10 PM

What a great looking home and the surroundings are beautiful too. You have lots to work with! The entry really is nice I think.

People sure did like yellow! The faux colonial stuff really does not fit the home but you don't like it anyhow. That one cabinet in the dining room is way off hugh?

By the way, if you do not have a fave, Color Impact has a nice pixel grabber. I like the one in PicPick (freeware) and it has lots of great screen capture tools too! The only thing is, it forces you to also download bloatware that you have to go in and delete/uninstall after the install which is more than a little annoying.

Anyhow, early on, with your pixel grabber, why not inventory all those colors you are not going to change? There is a place in Color Impact where you can store them all. I assume flooring remains the same? We know the stone is not going to change. Etc.

I will try to play some over the next day or so. I do think turquoise worth exploring and it would let you incorporate your red sofa and grays with no problems. Remember, changing the value of the color does not change its hue.

You have lots of nice lighting so also think about something other than white for the ceilings. It is another surface that would let you introduce color if a wall does not work or fit.

sdsester · 11-12-2012, 11:30 PM

So I took a minute and my pixel grabber to one of the better photos you linked. So you have some additional gray possibilities to think about the first color is the grout in the stone wall. The second is a prevalent gray I picked from the wall itself. The third color from the left is your flooring. Obviously I showed you the full value of the hues and then possible higher values of them.

I then built a color wheel anchored with the light gray at the top and then saturated it. I then abstracted one of the split compliments in a couple intensities but forgot to save the second color wheel. You could balance with the other (not shown but in the blue-violet range) to complete a split-complimentary color scheme that should look nice. You would not necessarily need a hole wall. Lucky you! One of the split compliments is turquoise.

Complimentary colors, as you probably know, are those directly across from each other on a color wheel. Split compliments are those to either side of the compliment.

Anyhow, food for thought?

sdsester · 11-15-2012, 05:44 PM

Remembered these two URLs. I have no experience with the companies and I am sure their are many more out there. You may do better with a large output graphics printer in your area? Just more food for thought. Maybe introducing the color you want does not have to be in the form of paint?

http://www.wallfloweronline.com/

http://www.muralsyourway.com/?mmwaf=...Feg-MgodnkMA9g

The cling ones could be fun and you could even change them with your moods or seasons?

airrikka · 12-21-2012, 10:57 PM

sdsester - We've been working hard and have finished the color selection! I wanted to give you an update since you'd put so much thought into my dilemma. I put my progress pics and final outcome into a blog so you can take a look at your leisure. Let me know what you think? Other opinions are welcome as well!