Stuck on my bedroom.

So my landlady is letting us all paint our rooms and do what we want with them because she "trusts our taste since this is a house for young people and we're young people". Anyway, I'm totally stuck on what to do. I was at first trying to get an earthy, forest feel. But the green I got is soooo horrible. The kinds of things I have in my room include: a conch shell, pan flute, penny whistle, lots of wall hangings/decorative headscarves and scarves, incense and oil burners, etc. I want something really bohemian I guess. But I just don't know what to do. Another problem is that we're not allowed to paint the trim. It's wood trim and we have wooden closet doors, but we can't paint the wood. I was thinking the wood might have worked with the forest thing but I just can't do it right. Any other ideas?

 

What is the colour green you have at the moment? Maybe you could do the sponging effect, kind of like stone.

 

Well.. it's like nursary/puke green. The description at home depot was "Grass green" but it's definitely not. I couldn't even finish painting because I just hated it so much. Here's a picture with it in the background.

 

It's too dark, especially if it's a small space/room.

With the conch shell and other decorations, have you considered a tropical theme instead of forest? Lighter colors, still a nature theme, and additional decorations are cheap and look good even if they are a bit sparse. If you're handy, you can get some cheap cotton twine and make some fishnets to add to the flavor, there are several good sites on netmaking on the internet.

 

I'd suggest doing the walls a basic earthy beige, and then sponging over them. It would create a dappled effect, as well as keeping the space light enough if its small. Something else that you could use for a foresty feel without any painting is plants. Fake or real the green creates a lush feel, especially if you use Ivy. It's really easy to train, My cousin has a pot of ivy in a little sconse thing, and she's trained it down her wall. It's really neat

 

If you want to go for a bohemian feel, I'd suggest putting a bit of an Indian theme in there (the headscarves and incense and stuff are good for that!)- a nice purple or red on your walls would probably look really groovy! If you're doing purple, though, MAKE SURE it's a nice purple, because I picked a color I thought was okay and it ended up being so dreary-depressing-looking

 

teracotta is a good earthy color and goes with almost everything. That's what color I painted my bedroom and it's really nice and warm feeling without being too dark. Or a light cocoa brown? I would suggest choosing a color that goes with your belongings.

 

Thanks everyone! My belongings are... well... eclectic in colour. I'm going to go for the light cappuccino/light cocoa, sandy, tannish brown thing.. My only problem now is finding out which is the right one. Those little paint squares at Home Depot are horrible for trying to imagine what it'd look like.

 

We just got done painting our livingroom and our laundry room, and it was really hard to find the right color because colors we thought we'd like looked different once we got it on the wall. We went with svelt sage...



What we ended up doing was taking the time and going to a real paint store (because all the times before I have gone to home despot and lowes and used the color blocks and came home with what I thougth was a good color only to have it look like spinache or worse) and asking to borrow a paint color fan, it has fifty million colors on it and you can take it home and hold it up at night and durring the day, in different spots and then pick three. Then we went back and got tiny little pints of each color and painted a square foot swath of each side by side on the wall to get a better feel for it.

It really helped us to be able to see it up there and then we had little cans of paint to use for accents.

When you are picking the cappachinos or colors with browns be careful it does'nt have a pink undertone(unless you like that). I had no idea browns had pink in them before I painted my bathroom with what I thought was gonna be a coffee with cream color and was like...wtf man?? It is so frustrating cause those little squares just don't represent the color accurately.

 

That looks great! Another good thing about going to a paint store is if you don't like the color you can usually take the can back and they can change it a little for free.

I painted my bedroom terracotta and it looked pink. It was good paint from a paint store, but the lighting in my room made it look totally different. I got used to it though and it kind of complimented everything in there well.

 

Thank you, we went from a dark brown paneling to textured drywall and we just feel so refreshed now

I don't understand why there is pink in there...the taupe we have in our bedroom has a yellow undertone and it is so much more soothing I think. I never did get the science of color, it's still hit or miss with me.

Terracotta sounds nice though. I love color..even if i don't understand it.