One Room Challenge | Week 5: Final Paint Color

Week 5 of the One Room Challenge was a good one. I took a break from social media and man was it refreshing. Last week I was stumped on the paint color for our master walls since I thought I was going to go dark until I actually had dark walls and hated them. Last Thursday the rug finally came in and eased my mind a little. It was so much lighter in person than on AllModern and I could hold it up to all my new swatches to see how they would compliment each other. I painted few dozen mid tone grays, a few lighter grays and didn't love any of them. I sat down to think hard about what color would make the rug and the headboard the stars of the show. It hit me like a ton of bricks - the Spring Makeover Kid's Playroom. 

Week 1: The Befores & Plans
Week 2: The Mood Board
Week 3: Paint Swatches
Week 4: Paint Fail Lessons

In the playroom I decided on the perfect white, Behr's Snow Fall (Sarah Sherman Samuels's fav), because I wanted the intricate rug and toys to be the focus. This room had the same exact problems, but Snow Fall was just a little to white. I went Home Depot to find a white that would give the room a nice fresh canvas but still bring some warmth despite it lacking in natural light. (psst.. if you look closely you can see a sneak peek of the rug!)

And yes, I work around things because I'm too lazy to move things out of the room. As real as it's gonna get.

A few hundred white swatches later (at least it felt like a hundred), I still couldn't find one that wasn't too cool and not so warm it looked yellow. My last resort was to go to my paint pro friends at the HD paint desk to make a custom color. I knew I loved Snow Fall but wanted it just a little more saturated. The pros gave me the formula... it's 2 drops of LL Umber, aka dark brown. So first we increased it by 50% adding 1/384 of LL, it was still just a little too white. Next we increased in by another 50% (100% from the original)  and adding a total of 2/384 more Umber and it was PERFECT.

When the lights are off, it still feels like warm sunlight is streaming in. Going to bed, I didn't feel anxious or closed in, I felt light and relaxed. I woke up not feeling groggy and knew it was the perfect color for this room.

You may not be able to tell from the pitcutres and to be honest Auston doesn't know the difference in real life, but if you look back in the Playroom photos you can tell this white has way more body to it.

Sure, plain white walls are pretty boring to look at without anything in the room, but let me tell you the rug looks incredible.

Even though I landed on a paint color, I'm struggling with the end tables. I bought these pretty white oak end tables from target and was super excited for the light wood tones. But when I opened them it was a classic case of "you should've measured this before you bought it." You guys they were literally 5 inches below our bed. And we're both tall so we had to almost fully bend over to put something on the top, let alone in the drawers (which were super shallow). So no dice on the snighttands, I've already returned them. Right now I'm actually keeping our original dressers that doubled as night stands since they are vintage handmedowns and pretty substantial in taking up space.

This weekend is the most fun and most stressful part of the whole challenge - decorating!

How are you doing on your challenge?! It doesn't look like I made a ton of progress this week, but I made a lot of mental progress, if that makes any sense. Per the norm be sure to check out the guest participants this week!