Ya know, the great thing about paint is…it’s just paint! It’s not like you knocked out a wall so you could create a swingin’ space with floor-to-ceiling neon orange shag carpet.
Behr Paint has a really cool web site where you can try different color combinations in virtual rooms. (IANA Behr paint salesperson, interior decorator, brain surgeon, or rocket scientist.)
I once lived in an old farmhouse that had been converted into 8 apartments, and the landlord Just Did Not Care. So he paid for the paint and I painted my bathroom the following colors: Hot pink (for everything that got direct light), Lavender (for everything in shadow) and White (trim). Sounded good, looked good on chips. The practical result was that every time I went into the bathroom I went blind. I had to shower in the dark. When Ilooked in the mirror I invariably looked pale and washed-out, as who wouldn’t in an environment that (those) color (s).
Hmm, that reminds me, I need to paint the dining room, it’s too drab!
Wow. You look like you’re going to be living in a bag of Sweet Tarts™. Is this the kids’ playroom, or something?
Close…my daughter’s nursery.
Definitely let him see it. Why should you hoard all the horror for yourself?
As I type, my wife is crying and swearing quietly as she does Something With Curtains. She won’t tell me what’s going wrong, only that it’s “a nightmare” and I can’t possibly be of any help.
My guy and I are big on compromise. He wanted pink for the bathroom, I wanted a sort of blue with a hint of lavender. We ended up with bright lilac. He picked it. I get a shock every time I open that bathroom door.
When we redid the kitchen this spring, I wanted the walls to be a sort of pale wheaten golden yellow. He wanted lime green. We have a bright lemony yellow on the walls at the moment, and I still have doodads to buy to cover as much as I can (shelves, pot racks, et al). I am considering moving a good part of my cookbook collection to shelves on those kitchen walls.
We are doing the livingroom next. We have an oak fireplace with built-in oak bookcases flanking the mantle, and lots of dark leather furniture. That’s enough somber stuff. I brought home a flyer with shades of white as theme, and I insist that we pick a colour from that list.
BTW, I love the nursery pictures, Hal Briston. 
When we bought our house, I picked out the paint for every room.
Hubby had tears in his eyes in the middle of Home Depot when he saw the colors. He had always lived in white walls and beige carpet.
He loved every room once it was painted. (I might have pictures on a disk somewhere) Every room, that is, but our bedroom. I had picked out a pale peach, with a salmon accent wall. The salmon was perfect, but they mixed the peach wrong. It came out Pepto Pink. I had one wall half painted when he came in and whispered “I can’t sleep in a PINK room. What would I tell the guys?” I changed it.
The flat I just bought wasn’t intended to be “for sale”. The couple living in it had redone the floors, fixed the doors (he’s a carpenter), painted every room except the ones with tile walls, redone the kitchen and turned a room into a nursery just last year…
But they saw a house they just Had To Buy, so they put their flat for sale, and I got it.
Love the place: great insulation (it’s in a mountain village and built “old fashioned mountain style”, the walls take thick seriously), views on each side except North, the woodwork is great… but it’s going to take me a while to get used to the crimson living room, really. Or maybe scarlet, I’ve never been able to tell those two colors apart. Beyond red, anyway. With sunfire-yellow curtains (they left the curtains and lamps). My bedroom is Navel Orange; the guest bedroom is light brown on three sides and a darker, more orangish one on the fourth. So if/when I repaint the living room it can’t be anything too mild, either. This is going to be fun 
I know all about electric paint colors. Hubby and I tried to buy a nice, fresh green for our bedroom in our last rental house. We bought the Lowe’s bargain brand, and it came out more like electric apple green. When we repainted the dining room, we went with Laura Ashley paint - just because we found swatches we liked. It came out absolutely 100% perfectly matched to the swatch. Now, we pony up the extra dough for better paint - we’ve used all American Traditions in our current house.
In the entry, living room, and kitchen, we have a creamy off-white, a crisp khaki, and a brick red accent wall. My office is bright white with “bubbles” of purple, lilac, cyan, and soft sky blue. Our son’s room is yellow and green with a wide stripe of orange. Now, we just have our bedroom left!
I endured a bad bathroom. It took a couple weeks, but he screaming pumpkin orange has kinda grown on me (and I was actually close to tears over it originally). I’ve been told that if I open the window, my bathroom acts as a beacon to ship traffic on Lake Michigan some 40 miles away.
My husband was a professional painter for years (the house kind, not the Picasso kind). If any of you want his professional opinion of paint colours before you start to paint, he would gladly advise you. It turns out it is damned near an art to get paint and stain colours to do what you want on the walls, and he’s an artist. I guess he is more of the Picasso kind.
My wife wouldn’t make decisions on the color of our TV room, so finally, in frustration, I bought a gallon to the brightest, GLOSS, bubble-gum pink you could find.
I warned her that if she didn’t decide, I was painting the walls this hideous shade.
She waffled, for 3 months :smack:
She went out of town overnight, and I painted the room.
It was horrible. I bought curtains, just to keep the neighbors from seeing it. My best friend came over and had a one-word response, “Day-um”.
Wife came home and declared that she liked it… :eek:
She made me keep it that way for three years.
I sheepishly repainted it a more mellow shade of red.
Eli
My wife recently helped repaint her workplace, which probably hasn’t seen any significant redecorating since about 1982. Most of the office was painted with a sort of chocolate color on the walls and white trim. Quite nice. My wife did her office in a light green, with an even lighter green "feather-duster"ed over it, which gives a really neat textured effect.
And then came the bathroom, which is where things fell apart. There’s a window in there, and it had this ugly curtain on it, which they decided to ditch in favor of blinds. But not just plain white blinds: they bought white blinds, and then my wife’s stepdad (who used to be a professional painter) painted them red. So far, so good.
But they decided that, instead of the white trim they’d used elsewhere, they wanted something different, something “beachy”. They wanted yellow. I suggested a very pale shade, which my wife rejected in favor of something more in the canary family.
So, they painted the bathroom while I was gone (I had helped with a lot of the painting and furniture moving on the weekends). My wife brought me over and unveiled the bathroom. Remember: red blinds, yellow trim.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“McDonaldland,” I replied.
Apparently, not the response for which she had hoped.
The house my husband lived in for some years growing up had from all evidence, previously been owned by someone who had the unfortunate combination of horrid taste, and a liking for strong doses of LSD.
One room had 3 walls in orange (I think), and 1 wall in black (I definitely recall that description). Those were rectified before I ever saw the place.
I did get a look at the wallpaper in the entryway before it was redone. “Whorehouse red” flocked wallpaper. Oh dear.
Regarding the electric blue bathroom: Consider sponging a lighter shade of blue over it. That’ll allow the electric blue to be toned down considerably while still allowing bits of it to be seen plus providing some nice visual texture to the walls (we have two colors sponged on the walls of our bedroom and love it, even though neither is electric blue).
I once had to repaint a bathroom too, it ended up way too purple. You can’t tell for sure until it dries overnight though.
One room in our house is a shade of green that changes throughout the day as the light moves. Sometimes it looks pale yellow and sometimes it looks sage green. I like it either way but we have learned now to take the paint chips home and look at them in the room’s light because you can’t tell anything in the store.
If you don’t want to repaint the whole thing you can get a glaze and do a treatment over it and it will really tone it down. I did our second bathroom this way, and the undercoat was almost a shocking blue like you describe, but the effect after a tinted glaze is very muted and more fun to do then repainting.
I’ll also throw out as a general tip to those who have had bad luck painting dark colors - you need to use a tinted primer first and even then dark reds still need multiple coats to look right.
I have a hard time imagining some of the color combos in this thread!
After living for twenty years in places that were beige, beige, beige, I went a little nuts in my condo. I don’t care, I like it.
Very red living room.
Green-on-green bedroom. (That was a mistake, but it grew on me, especially once I stenciled in the flowers, which were not part of the original plan.)
Yellower-Than-I-Wanted Kitchen.
Once it all dried, I absolutely love it. Maybe I’ll paint the hallway electric baby blue. 
My best friend painted her breakfast nook a nice salmon color. Well, it was nice until the sunlight hit it in the morning. Day-Glo Orange. Just like a hunter’s cap. She repainted it a pale teal.
Or maybe that’s just another picture of the bedroom. 
This is the kitchen.
:eek: flashback My father is notoriously frugal and outfitted our house in remnants* and oops paint. He painted the bathroom (baby blue tile, blue sinks, bluish floor) Pumpkin Chiffon. It wasn’t until years later that I learned how much my mom hated the color; she just didn’t speak up about it. I think it stayed that color until they were getting ready to sell, when he repainted it white.
*hot pink shag in my room, deep orange with that pile that goes up and down in my brother’s
I love bright colors. When I painted the kitchen my mom talked me into paler colors than I wanted because she said they’d look darker on the walls. That may be, but they are much paler than I wanted. I wanted bright, dammit! Turn on Telemundo or Univision and look at the colors on the stage sets on those channels. Those are what I want.
Only one room of my house has colors as bright as I want, and I love it. It’s bright, vibrant yellow-orange. When the sun shines in the window it’s like being on the surface of the sun!
