Accent pillows

Color is one of the quickest and easiest ways to change the look of a room, yet people are often intimidated by bold colors.  So many homeowners pick one of the popular “off-white” shades and then paint every room in the house.  They believe this will make decorating each room easier.  They may be right, but selecting different color themes for different rooms will give their home a custom “designer” look.  Moreover, the contrast between a wall color and white trim adds another rich dimension to any room.  So whether you are going from Beige to Burlap or White to Sienna Red, the leap from what you are use to can be a scary one but don’t let it be!

Here are some recommended steps for painting a room:

·        You need to start with a color theme.  After you flip through many home and designer magazines you are going to find wall paint that ranges from light greens and blues to deep reds and yellows.  Although you may love them all, you will need to narrow in on your color theme.  You can start with looking at your furniture.  If you have a lot of upholstered pieces, one way to decide on a color is to pick one in the fabric that you would like to accentuate.  Then you need to look at the range of shades and believe us, there are many within each color.  If you do not have a lot of upholstered furniture in the room, take a look at the rug or the window treatments and follow the same process.  If your rug is neutral and your furniture is fairly neutral, then you need to add color to the room.  Just about the easiest way to add color to a room is through the addition of accent pillows.  Then you can use one of the colors in the pillows for your wall color theme.

·        Once you decide on the color theme, you need to look at about five different shades of your color on your walls.  We can’t stress enough the need to sample swatches on your walls.  You need to look at them in both day and night light.  Good paint stores will sell you small paint samples and give you a credit towards your final purchase.  Buy those cheap foam brushes to apply the paint swatches to the wall (a new one for each color) and then dispose of them.  Live with the swatches for a few days and then pick a color.

·        Paint the trim a white or off-white in semi-gloss.  Unless you have a very unique old world home, if you have stained trim around doors, windows and base boards, paint it!  Nothing will make a room look dated and smaller than 70’s wood trim.

·        The final step is to paint the room.  Painting is a good do-it-yourself project, but if you hate to paint - hire a professional. 

If you are not ready just yet to paint a room, but you want to introduce a new color into a room quickly, painlessly and inexpensively then think about accent throw pillows.  If you have a neutral couch, you can put two, four or five pillows on a couch in a bold print and truly change the room.  If you have a chair with a floral or stripe, then find a subtle fabric and trim to finish the custom look.  Whatever the style of your furniture, there is a beautiful solution at the Fabric Workroom and you’ll be sure that your friend or neighbor will not have the same thing.