Teal, Teal or Teal?

I know it's been another couple weeks in between my last post. This mom stuff ain't easy, kids. Our cute little Cubscout was down and out with the stomach flu and then a nasty fever. But, she's feeling so much better. Just look at this sweet face :-) She's getting so big - can't believe I'm planning her first birthday party already. Stay tuned for my post on her party - it's a Teddy Bear Picnic!

In other news...

Brian and I are in the middle of redesigning our living room and master bedroom. We really loved our deep, rich maroon/plum wall in the living room; it was sophisticated and really made a statement in the room. But, now that we have a happy little munchkin running round, we wanted to bring more light into the room. The plum color was really eating up light all day long. Mornings were dark, causing us to turn on every light in the room so Little Bear could see her toys and I my cup of joe. {Thank God for coffee. And mascara. And cover-up.}

Many of my friends who know I have a knack for design ask me, "Where do you start when designing a room? How do you know what color to paint the walls?" A room can be inspired by many different things - a gorgeous pillow, your favorite style of art (Ex: Art Deco), a rug, a beautiful hotel room. Inspiration sometimes comes when you are least expecting it. In our case, it was this painting by Brian's Great Aunt Harriet. We inherited a set of paintings after she passed two years ago. She was an incredible artist and used to work in advertising in San Francisco.

We've had the pair on the walls in our living room for about 6 months now. When we started talking about redesigning the space, we both gravitated to this painting as inspiration for a color palette. We really liked the combination of navy, teal, cream, and chartreuse/yellow.

Knowing that we wanted to change the plum wall color, we decided to find a teal that complimented the teal in the painting (sofa/her necklace). Trying to find the right teal took a while. It's not an easy color to match. Most were either too green or too blue, and we were looking for something in the middle. From nine, we narrowed it down to four:

Behr: Lagoon, Teal Zeal, & Aquatic Green
Sherwin-Williams: Lakeshore

Tip / If you cannot decide on a paint swatch, take the swatches to the hardware store and have them mix you up some samples. They cost anywhere between $2.50-$5.00 each. Paint them on the wall in a large square and leave them up for a few days. Look at the way the light hits the different colors during the day. The color will look different as the light changes.

{Photo take at night...We chose the far right. It was the perfect mix of the middle and left color.}

We chose Behr paint in Lagoon. It's the right mix of green and blue. And just an aside...I think Behr paint covers so much better than Sherwin-Williams. Way better. We got the paint and primer in one, slapped up a nice thick coat and called it a night.

What do you think? It's so much brighter in here during the day. We are really happy with the way it turned out.

It's a big difference from this:

If you're hesitant about painting a bold color in one of your rooms, I say, Go for it! It's just paint. You can always paint over it if you don't like it.

Stay tuned for posts on the rest of the room!