Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Say 'No' to Beige

Oh beige... the bane of my existence the last couple years.  Honestly, beige in-and-of-itself is a fine tone, but it seems that everyone, in this country at least, has forgotten that there are... wait for it... other colours!! I know, crazy idea. (Is it just me, or is it slightly ironic that I'm over-saturated by the colour beige?)

When we were selling our last house, we went from a ridiculous array of colours (it was my house as a university student and 'fun' was definitely the theme) to beige... everywhere.  Okay, the kitchen and bathroom were taupe.  I know, risky.  But the truth is, so many people cannot see their own furniture within a space unless you give them a 'neutral' background.  We began painting long before the house was sold and so we got to spend quite a bit of time in our beige bubble - it even started getting to Tony (let's be honest, it started getting to me the day we finished painting everything).  But it got the house sold, and that was the point.  It actually looked pretty good, it was just... so beige. (I think our bland, student furniture contributed to the overall blahness of the space.)

So now we're in our new house and it's beige... wonderful.  Well, the living room is anyway, along with the living room carpet, which puts us, once again in a beige bubble.

Since there hasn't been much activity going on here lately in terms of anything valid to share with you, I thought I would post our intended colour scheme for the house.  So far, the master bedroom and guest room have been painted and the rest waits patiently.


The overall intent is to paint the downstairs in dark earthy tones.  It's meant to be a very comfy and hugging space, and since our windows are large, I think we can get away with such dark tones.  The accent wall is the wall behind the stairs that connects the two levels, so we tried to find something that would look good with both the brown and the straw colour for the hallway (see some beigey-toned colour - I'm not completely against it, I promise!)

I'm most excited for the dining room - I've always wanted a really intense, dark dining area. It's more reminiscent of the colours that would have been in this house originally. Check this out:


Great, isn't it?? And I thought our colours were intense.  I got it from Old House Colours, a great site to give you inspiration for your old house, whether it's Victorian or Arts & Crafts.

So back at our house....
The upstairs, being the sleeping and working area, is meant to be a retreat, hence the softer colour pallet in the hallway and bedrooms.  The inspiration for the master started with this baby:



We try to buy as much as we can from the Restore, second hand stores and garage sales, but Ikea is still a serious vice for me (and now that we moved within a ten-minute drive, I really have to be careful, yikes!).  Anyway, we loved this image as soon as we saw it - it's about eight feet across and five feet tall - and it emanates the exact vibe we wanted in our bedroom: a calm, serene escape.

The main bathroom needs some serious sex-appeal - I think you can all attest to that!  With the dark tiles we figured an intense grey would be perfect, and even though it is a step away from the lighter tones upstairs, the neutrality (is that even a word?) of the grey still works with everything else.  We are in the process of painting all the accessories (and maybe fixtures) black, so it'll look really sharp when it's done.

Thanks for stopping by!
-a.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts with Thumbnails