On Painting the Trim in My Bedroom

Project 365, Day 135/365

Just when you thought I was done talking about the paint in my bedroom, THIS POST HAPPENS. FOAS, while I’m happy that my walls aren’t landlord greige any longer, as you may know if you’ve been following, I wasn’t 100% happy with where I landed color-wise. Even though I tested and tested…I must have really just paid close attention at the same time of day…because the rest of the time, the walls read dusty rose rather than peach. It’s pretty, and I’ll make it work, but it’s just not what I was envisioning there.

However, one of the things that I’ve been thinking on for a few weeks is whether or not I would like it all between if I went all in, as in took the current color and expanded it to my baseboards, crown molding, interiors of the doors, and yeah…maybe even my ceiling. If Charles is reading this, sorry I haven’t talked to you about this yet…and don’t say no.

I’ve long loved the monochrome every-surface-one-color look, particularly in a dark, bold color, or a soft pastel. A pastel, in particular, kind of needs a modern application like that to not veer too youthful. There are times when I’m in bed, that I look around at my walls and think “princess room.” And nope, that’s not really the vibe I was going for. I know actualizing the color palette I have in mind will help, but I think this will help even more. This wasn’t really an option originally, as my previous landlord once told me not to touch the moldings or woodwork in the apartment, but we have new landlords now, and I’ve been told no such thing. It’s definitely an “ask for forgiveness” rather than “ask for permission” situation, possibly.

I meant to get around to take photos of the room as-is and photoshopping the moldings to show you, but it got too dark on me, so I promise to try to do that for next week! In the mean time, here’s some inspiration:

Let’s start with this very English room from the very English Farrow & Ball. While my room looks nothing like this in many ways, including having no paneling or wall molding, I do love how a quaint, simple and traditional room is made to feel much more au courant just by the mere fact that all the woodwork is painted the same chalky sage green.

Well looky what we have here. My friend Sara’s TV room. She wanted to create a hug-like, moody cave of a room, so really and truly, the only option was to take the deep hue and slather it all over everything. But this room would look so different have the trim (and ceiling) been white, or even a lighter shade of another complementary color.

Here’s another example, from Chris Loves Julia, of a color top to bottom, side to side. A decision I’d have to make it is whether to stop at the ceiling molding and leave the ceiling the white (more like grayish cream) that it is, or take it all the way. I love that look in a dark room like this and Sara’s from above, but I don’t know if I want to be cocooned in a lighter, creamy pinky peach. I’ll definitely have to take this to Photoshop to test it out visually before biting any bullets around here.

All the images prior were of much more deeply saturated wall colors than what I’ve got going on, so I wanted to pull some brighter examples, like this bedroom I found on Ruemag.com. I’ve contemplated doing something like this, where I pull maybe a darker shade of my existing hue, then leave the ceiling alone. One thing I’m realizing as I look at this photo, however, is that my original windows are paned, and in order to nail the look, I’d need to paint those, too. I’d be happy to do that if I owned this place, but…is it worth the time to do that?

I’ve stared at this image for the better part of a year. I’m pretty sure it’s the image that made me want to go peach…you know, before I thought I was painting my room peach and it turned out to just be pink? This may be the closest image to what I could make work: wall and trim the same color, ceiling white, window panes whatever color my window panes are. These are slightly inset from the surrounding molding, so it probably works better than what I have, so…not sure it’s the solution for me.

I’ll figure something out. I’m going to try to take a few well-lit shots of my room this weekend, play around in Photoshop, then bring it to the blog and see how it goes. Stay tuned!

See you tomorrow, FOAS.