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Decisions | Pad Patter 30 Oct

bellbird

bellbird

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Pollywog
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How do you decide things like paint colours in shared rooms of your house? Is there a democratic kind of process? Do you agonise over these kind of decisions or are you really decisive and just pick a random shade and go with it?

Apart from knowing we want to paint the wall behind the telly in the lounge room a kind of grey and having almost 50 shades of grey paint cards and brochures all over the floor and stuff for the last few weeks, and despite a 'ok everyone pick their fave 4 and write them on a post-it note and we'll do this democratically', we aren't much closer- there was no overlap in the votes and DH is not willing to buy like 16 sample pots. I think the next step is meant to be 'ok everyone only pick 1' but i can't do that myself! i think i love all my top 4 equally! i even thought about pulling out all the more blue toned greys b/cos i think warmer or more beige/greige tones would be better but that feels like i'm interfering in the democratic process -maybe just sticking the paint names in a hat is just easier? do other people do that?!
 
I agonize over decisions like that....I can't just make a rash decision if its something that is semi permanent/permanent or hard for me to change. Right now, I've got paint color cards and I'm trying to make a decision on which shade of red to use/goes with my accessories that will tie everything together. I am wanting to paint some plant pots and also after seeing a very expensive colored rattan lamp, I am wanting to do a knock off version in my color. I've said to my mum, well actually the other major paint company here does bigger test pots, before we make a decision lets go to the other retailer that sells them and see what colors they have....its one thing trying to decide looking at a screen its another if you do it in person. Of course when I made that bold suggestion we then went into the start of a 10+ week lockdown so couldn't explore further.
 
One year when we needed to paint the spare bedroom we just put some paint swatches out and had our ferret pick. Yep seriously we just let her pick the color. Whichever swatch she went towards first became the color we used
 
Am I supposed to ask for input from the other people in my house? :giggle
But in reality, they don't really care:shrug, so I do my thing. If I'm painting, I tend to get a shade in my head and try to match it as close as possible in the store and then just go for it.
 
I've only picked paint colors 4 times in my life and 3 of them were in childhood, for my own bedroom. The most recent was 2011, when my husband and I finally felt able to redecorate our house. We joked that it was decorated in "early childhood over builders' paint."

I don't remember things from so long ago very well, but I'm pretty sure we just talked it out. We agreed on 3 top favorites and painted big swatches on the wall to contemplate for a few days. Then we talked it over and chose. We're pretty easygoing people.

I still like the choices we made, although the yellow walls haven't been fabulous for my photography. But I was barely embarking on my photography journey in 2011 and had no clue about that. Anyway, I'd rather live in colorful surroundings.
 
Oh! I could share how my kids chose for their bedrooms in 2011. Rhiannon was 10, Collin was 8, and Ian was 5.

Rhiannon, who always said "rainbow" when asked her favorite color, chose the colors on the multiple lampshades of this floor lamp we had recently bought for her. It had bendy arms for each of several lamps. Her walls are rich tones of blue, green, orange, and pink -- one on each wall -- and the curtains and outlet covers are purple, also one of the lampshade colors. Funnily, the lamp was cheap and lasted only a year or two. But she still loves her room, and I do too. I feel a little sorry for whoever might move in after us, if they don't like it, because it might be hard to paint over, but oh well.

Collin is less talkative so I'm not sure what their thinking process was on choosing but I suspected they were inspired by Rhiannon but trying to be different. They have a different pastel color on each wall, green, blue, and yellow, and I'm so glad, because they have the huge bonus room above the garage and I think more subtle colors are probably better in large spaces. They've never complained about their room so I think they still like it (but they're also not a complainer).

I feel a little bad for Ian still being stuck with the paint job in his room, though he only said once, a few years ago, that he was tired of it, and since then, he has said it's fine when I suggested we could paint over it. He has always been a big gamer and at the age of 5 he loved Mario. So I attempted to make his walls look like the Mario game, with green hills on the bottom and blue sky on the top and decals we found at the store. It's neat enough, but not very creative. I'm only artistic in Photoshop. ;)
 
Generally I pick colours and hubby paints.
Just because my kids have chosen colours like black and purple which I veto-ed vehemently.
 
Mostly I get to pick paint colors for our house because I have to do the painting. My hubby used to try to give me his opinion, but if his was different than mine, i'd just keep trying to convince him why my color choice was going to be best. Lol. Mostly he just doesn't really care and let's me do my thing. I tend to do the same as you and go get a huge pile of paint chips and then over agonize over it for awhile before I just decide. Once I painted a whole room and then when I put up one of my favorite pictures back on the wall (it's a photo of a baby turtle swimming for the first time at the edge of the ocean) the paint color clashes with my picture and I had to repaint the whole room again. That was pretty awful. Lol... so whatever you pick at least lay it on your furniture and things that will go on the wall to test for that disaster. :giggle
 
Ohhhhhhh, this is a loaded question. Okay - for years, I've been collecting the paint swatches I like. Whenever I get that box out - watch out! My oldest DD is my co-conspirator on paint colors. We're addicted to them. I always put the "choices" behind the light switch plates and leave them there to let them "grow on me". When we were building this house, I went through the same thing - it's SO funny because I get teased so bad about the "shades". The men always say they all look the same. No, they DO not!

This is a story that I HAVE to tell: Ava and I went to Lowe's and got a bunch of paint swatches for our new house. We finally narrowed it down to the color I wanted. OKAY - the day the general contractor started the painters, there's a knock on our door (we were living on the property, in a small house) and he says, "the paint that I just bought a ton of HAS to be the wrong color! (My husband answers the door and I'm not up yet.) My hubby comes into the bedroom (I'm still asleep) and tells me. I say "what is the name of the color?" Hubby tells me and I say "that's it. It was "Bamboo Something".

As soon as I could get my wits about me, we headed up to the house. I walked in and said "I love it!" and that was that! I STILL get teased about the "wrong paint color".
 
Our house is almost all still the original finishes... wallpaper in the bathrooms, with builder beige on orange peel texture for the rest. We'd considered doing an accent wall in the family room, but I couldn't settle on a color I thought would look good with all of DH's artwork/collectables.

We painted a cute mural of a castle on one wall of Matthew's room before he was born. It's still there but is now 80% covered with 2 giant movie poster banner things.

We painted Kaylee's room a couple of years ago. They agonized over the color choice and we did a bunch of samples. They wanted something between a light blue and light green, but leaning blue. In the end, with all of the yellow undertones from the carpet, ceiling, and trim, it came out looking green anyway, but they were too worn out from the process by then to consider redoing it! :lol
 
We AGONIZED over the color for our laundry room, and in the end I caved to hubby's choice. Happy Spouse, Happy House!!!
 
I love Danica's idea LOL. I think if you guys can't come to a unilateral decision, put all the choices in a container and pick one out. Hubs and I have a good system, he lets me know what colors he likes, I narrow it down to one I like and then I pick the tone/shade of it.
 
We pick colours by democratic vote.
I tell hubby what I want, why I want that particular colour, how great it will look on the wall and how it compliments our "overall aesthetic" in laborious and painstaking detail (it can take some time, months even). I will discuss why his colours won't work (but good job for participating honey!) and then we eventually agree (see democracy at work!) that the colours I picked are the best. Easy :giggle

That being said, I usually have it narrowed down to 1 choice by the time I present my colour choice to Tony (for the democratic part of the exercise) so I'm not sure I'm any help here Justine :giggle
 
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