We are painting the 7yo’s room. I’ve chosen a medium purple color. We’re leaving the cream doors & trim and the cream blinds. (This is a small room with a large window.) First of all I think that will make the room look bigger, and since we have half the walls painted, it does seem to be working that way. I think that curtains would not work in this scheme. (I might add some little decorating detail later, but not all out curtains if anything.)
Here’s where I’m confused. I’m working on painting her furniture bright red and she has bright red bedding. I bought a stamp to put bright red hearts somewhere on the walls. To help with this illusion of a bigger room, where should I place the hearts. On the sides and top of the window and doors? Along the ceiling edge like a border? In squiggly snake-like lines about 3/4 up the wall? Some other way?
I really don’t want to try something and then have to re-do it. I’m leaning toward the snake-like line. My instinct says that the others will make the walls look smaller. What do you think?
It’s hard to say without seeing the room, of course.
Why don’t you cut some hearts out of construction paper and tape them up with that blue masking tape that is supposed to pull right off? That way, you can try different things.
The NYT Home section this week said that cutains are tres passe, so you can congratulate yourself on your oh-so-trendy decision not to use them.
TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Six days, 15 hours, 15 minutes and 52 seconds.
265 cigarettes not smoked, saving $33.18.
Life saved: 22 hours, 5 minutes.
Not even for a little girl that loves wild colors? I tell you what…I talked her down from red and white striped walls to purple. I think it’s an improvement. I would have gotten dizzy in a striped room.
You realize that in three years, she’ll have grown completely out of it, right?
Then, you’ll either have to do it again, or she’ll end up covering her walls in posters and pinups of the hot boy band du jour. Would have been best if you could have put the trim on white walls, and saved the colorful stuff for the furniture. Helps the resale value of the house, too, if you’re ever planning on moving.
We have that crappy builder’s paint still and the house is going on 3 years old. This stuff will get a mark on it if you look at it funny. We had to paint the walls. I don’t mind painting again when she’s older or painting for resale. (As I was telling the man at Ace that was treating me like a child and trying to get me to buy 15 year paint and went down the list of painting supplies a person needs even after I said I had everything, we probably will paint in a few years again. That sexist pig! Sorry, I didn’t realize he bothered me so much.) I don’t plan on living in this house as if I’m selling it tomorrow. I lived that way for 5 years in our starter house because we always thought we’d move “next year”. Our house should be fun ,like us, and will be. Paint’s cheap.
Squiggly snake-like lines 3/4 way up the wall? How far apart - and all around the room? Seems to me that would make it seem smaller. I like the border all around near the ceiling. Don’t forget mirrors help add the illusion of space – maybe a large mirror (with a red frame!) over her dresser?
And yes, I agree on the no-curtains idea. I haven’t had curtains on my living room window for years. But how about just a valance – in red or with hearts if you can find such a thing (or make it).
Being the tiny room that it is, we had to put shelving over her dresser so that she could get her prized possessions out of the way. Sycorax, you gave me an idea though. I have a mirror that used to be on someone’s dresser. I think there is just the right place for it and it will reflect the light from the window perfectly.
I was concerned about putting the “border” around the ceiling edge because we weren’t going to paint it. Our house is 1 1/2 story so all of the ceilings are slightly lower than the usual. I didn’t want a white ceiling AND a ceiling border to accentuate the short ceiling. But now my husband has decided he wants to paint the ceiling. (He keeps hitting it with paint and we can’t tape it off because of the texturing.) So now we will be using the tinted ceiling paint trick (one cup of wall paint in one gallon of ceiling white, I hope Lynette Jennings knows what she’s talking about) to give the ceiling more depth. Perhaps the ceiling border will be best.
Any more opinions? I apparently I still have timewhile hubby finishes up in between work and soccer board meetings.
SoHoMom, generally speaking, the darker or more intense the color, the smaller the enclosed space will seem to be. The lighter the color, the larger the space.
Patterns and other visual business also make space seem smaller, so I hate to say it, but it sounds like you’ve shot yourself in the foot.
But hey, your kid likes purple, let her have purple. Her room is small? Go for the coziness. Paint the ceiling a light color and push the furniture up against the walls. You’ll be okay.
Come on, handy, don’t make me puke. When I was 4 and my sister moved in with my other sister, I was allowed to choose the color of “my” room. I chose “anything but pink”. You see when my sister and I were put in this room together I had just come home from the hospital (newborn) and no one noticed I was saying “not pink, not pink”.