Picking Paint

Once the wallpaper was stripped we learned a lot about paint.  I have always loved looking through Pottery Barn and Ballard Designs magazines and we both loved the idea of neutral walls.  We was shocked when we discovered that there are TONS of options when it comes to a "neutral" color.  Warm tones? Cool tones? Hint of blue? Hint of lavender? Brown undertones? Its enough to make your head spin!! We asked for help from a friend who really knows her stuff and decided to go with Sherwin Williams Strip 21.

These are the first three colors down the paint strip

I saw in a magazine where you should be able to take all of the paint chip colors for your house, throw them in a pile, and they should all compliment each other.  So for our master bedroom, we wanted something that would go with the the colors above as well as the master bathroom.  We were thinking a shade of blue but we didn't want it to be too matchy-matchy with the blue bathroom tile.

 Obsessed with this color! Think it will be great with some grey accents.  Comes off as a power blue with green undertones  - reminds me of a Charleston coastal blue!

Buying paint was a whole different story - during our first trip we had to call/text friends or family to help us every time the nice people at Sherwin Williams asked us a question.  We just thought you walked in said I want this color and they mix it up for you, WRONG! We had no clue when it came to matte/flat, eggshell, satin, semigloss, gloss, oil, latex.

This can is all over our house.  We used it for every wall color. We also chose an eggshell finish, which means it has a hint of sheen or gloss to the color, in an acrylic latex.  This is a pretty standard for painting walls.  

We soon realized all the trim needed to be done as well, although it was a creamy color it had a yellow hint to it due to age. However, we had to use oil base paint because the trim was previously painted in oil.  We found out that you can't  use a latex base paint on top of oil or it will peel and flake off very easily. Oil semigloss paint has a very pretty finish making your trim look like it shines! The down side to oil based paint is that it is like painting with molasses.  Its very thick and having paint thinner within reach is a must because once it touches or drips on something - it stays! Oil based paint also sticks to your skin and doesn't wipe off easily.  If it gets on you, wipe immediately or will be stuck - washing it with water does not help, as they say oil & water don't mix!

We also painted the ceilings white with just basic paint from Lowe's - they also had a hint of yellow. Before painting we used a primer and then two coats of everycolor on each of the walls. 

Highly recommend this primer.  Its in the medium range for price and does a great job. Hope this will help you from walking into a paint store and not feeling dumb like we did! Thanks for reading!