Living room – Benjamin Moore Pale Oak OC-20

Howdy,

The lamp has taken a backseat for a few days while I get some work done, so I thought I would fill you in on our living room colour choices.  Here’s the living room before, which was lovely but as I’m a serial “cool colours gal”, not quite right for me!

We started out by painting the ceilings and window tops with some white ceiling paint from Ace, which despite the poor reviews on the website worked just fine for us!

This is the first time I have really had the chance to play with paint colours, so we wondered down the road to get some paint testers. We knew we wanted something light and airy, so we popped down to our local Ace to look at the Clarke+Kensington collection of off-white colours.

We started out with Bone White CW-W2 and Swiss Coffee CW-W3, both on the cooler side of things.  I can’t seem to find any pics of them online, so here’s the testers on the wall.

They came out a little dark in the photo, but on the wall bone white seemed dirty and swiss coffee seemed very bright and yellowy – very white.

After a few days of angst, we came to realise that we liked neither of them, and ended up randomly choosing an off white Benjamin Moore colour that we both liked on the swatch………Benjamin Moore’s Pale Oak OC-20.

Here’s the finished result – what do you think?

Benjamin moore Pale Oak vs the old colour

Its a soft browny cream colour

This is a fair depiction of the colour against the white window top

It really shows off the floor :)

Its a really close match to the swatch for anyone trying to work out the colour on their own walls

The other outcome of all of this is that I discovered the full range of Benjamin Moore colours… expect me to be more adventurous with future rooms!

Benjamin Moore – Ace will lend you their swatches!

Xx

PS This is the second part of this post

Starting in the living room

A few months ago, my fiancé and I emigrated to the US and moved into the most British house we could find! It’s a 100 year old brick house on a cobbled street, with a lovely relaxed landlord who didn’t mind us decorating.

Apart from it’s beautiful wooden floors, it’s also all a little bit run-down, which leaves plenty of room for DIY and to make it our own :)

We started with the living room, which is currently a tired old yellow.

The living room with it’s wonderful floors and yellow paint. It looks rather cosy here, but a little bit tired and dark in real life

I love modern rustic designs, with lots of glass and reclaimed wood and plants and pops of colour.  The type of thing that’s airy and elegant and full of light and space:

Or something a little like a less cluttered version of our old apartment

My old apartment furnishings

Plenty of books and light and colour

So it was a little on the cluttered side!

So the first part is to paint the living room a bright neutral colour and to buy a slipcover for the sofa. But which colour? Neutral? Red?

I quite like the idea of red…..