New Entry, Stairwell, and Living Room Paint Color

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If you’ve followed along with me for any period of time, you have heard talk, over and over again, about my #1 decorating dilemma:

 

 

My Giant Yellow Living Room!!

My entryway, stairway, dining area and 2 story living room are all painted this dingy, pale yellow color–including the ceilings!  In fact, the entire house was that color when we moved in.  I think they just filled up a giant sprayer full of yellow paint and went to town over the whole house . . .

 

 

Within weeks of moving in we painted every single room in the house that we could get our hands on, in a valiant effort to banish that yellow.  But this space stayed the same, mainly because it is such a huge area and we weren’t sure we would be able to paint it on our own.

 

 

Almost six years have passed since we moved in, so I’ve been living with this yellow for quite some time.  I learned how to decorate around it and tried to just ignore it in most of my plans. Despite my best efforts though, the honest truth is that these giant yellow walls and ceilings were locking me into a decor scheme that really was never my taste and style.

And I don’t want to sound like a whiny-pants . . . I am so blessed to have a home to live in, yellow or not!  I have worked hard to try and make the space “me” in the context of the yellow and be content with what we had, but I always felt like as long as the walls stayed that color, I wouldn’t be able to really create the space I was hoping for.

Well . . . low and behold after 6 years I was able to save up the $$ to hire a paint crew and last week the yellow was banished!!

 

 

The ceiling is now a normal, proper white and the walls are painted in Behr Silver Drop, a light, slightly-warm gray.

It literally feels like a different house!! All of that warm glow is gone and replaced by soft, neutral light.

 

 

You can still see some of the original yellow back in our dining area–we’ve got plans to tackle those ceilings and walls ourselves 🙂

 

 

It’s funny how the change in the tone of the room from warm to cool has made certain things really stand out more–like my light wood on the stairway railing. I think I should take some gel stain to those to darken them up, what about you?

And certain things just don’t really go well anymore, like the white floral painted chest in the above photo, along with this chest I painted several years ago.

 

 

There’s just not enough contrast anymore, so I guess those pieces will be heading to my antique booth to sell!

We also played around with the room arrangement a little too, since everything was moved around anyway.  I slid the whole sitting area towards the doorway about 4 feet so the space behind the brown chairs would be more open.

 

 

This lets more light come in from that back window, which I really like. And I used to have this chippy white cabinet in between those 2 chairs, but I swapped it out for this round table (which obviously needs some paint), again to to let more light pass through.

The white cabinet is now by our stairway, along with this chair I grabbed from another room. Again, the color is off in this chair and it needs some paint treatment, but you can get the idea.

 

 

My little white cherry blossom dresser has been in this spot, and since it’s going away I have to fill it up with something else. I think this arrangement will work just fine.

I also moved my sofa table from behind my sofa to by the backyard window. Disregard the cords and stuff–totally unstaged photos here!!

 

 

I think my favorite change though is swapping out our old TV cabinet for this empire buffet I found at a flea market last year.

 

 

I actually bought it for a friend who was needing a media cabinet, but it ended up being too small for her. I decided to keep it to use for myself, but it’s been sitting in my garage for almost a year now waiting to be incorporated! It’s going to work great and I like how it’s not as visually “heavy” as the TV cabinet was.  I set up my 2 chippy shutters, which usually sit on my stairway landing, on each side just to get an idea of how that would look. Their color is too light–I need a darker pair for more contrast–but I like the idea.  Guess I’ll have to head back to the flea market to find another pair 🙂

So that’s my big news for the day!! I really am so super excited about the space!  I don’t have the budget to change out any of my other large pieces (sofa, chairs, rug, etc.) so I will be looking for ways to update what I have and make it fit more with this color scheme. I feel like though that I can finally start working on this room and making it be what I’ve always wanted it to be.  So no more whining from me about my yellow room!

Yall have a great weekend 🙂