How I selected my Paint Colours ~ It's all in the direction

This is pretty handy if you've already read my post on selecting paint colours & the importance of the direction of the room. Here I explain how the direction of each of my rooms impacted my decisions... as well as where I went wrong!

There are so many brands out there offering a wealth of colours and it can become overwhelming. If there was a way to reduce the choice based on the type of room, wouldn't that make life easier?

East-Facing Main Bedroom

“East-facing... gets a huge amount of sunlight all day long...”

Our main bedroom is East-facing and we're on top of a hill so it gets a huge amount of sunlight all day long, with direct sunlight hitting it for most of the day. This makes the room almost illuminate.

A room like this can handle most colour pallets but we decided that something calming would work well for our bedroom. We wanted to avoid "visual noise", a visual merchandising term meaning that we wanted this room to be a place to unwind with a good book before going to sleep. So we knew it was best to avoid stimulating colours such as bright and vibrant hues. We can really relax in this space.

West Facing Guest Bedroom / Nursery

“West-facing... don't get much sunlight during the day but will get a warm glow in the evening.”

West facing rooms don't usually get much sunlight during the day but will get a warm glow in the evening. This room, however, has the added complication of being blocked by the top of the hill we live on. Therefore sunlight becomes obscured by the trees and the hills itself.

So selecting a colour for this room was very troublesome. I decided that I wanted to distract from how shadowy this room can get by creating a feature wall on the otherwise large blank wall behind the bed. Painting it a pop of colour in green has helped to draw the eye to this area, helping to make the room appear larger and brighter.

The height of the cladding helps to elongate the height of the ceiling, making it appear light. If the cladding were lower down the wall, the room would have appeared smaller and potentially more cramped with the feeling of a low ceiling.

The pale pink walls offer a contrast to the cladding that isn't as stark and harsh as white could have been . White would have also emphasised the shadows in this room.

Opting for a soft pink instead makes the room glow as it almost reflects the light back into the room.

Narrow & Dark Hallway

“this is quite a narrow hallway so it doesn't get a lot of natural light but I wanted to make sure that I had a neutral base colour without looking too washed out.”

I always knew that I wanted elephant's breath from Farrow & Ball on the walls in this room and on the landing as well. It's such a good basic neutral colour that also adds a bit of warmth to a room. Since painting I have noticed that this colour adapts really well to changing light. This is quite a narrow hallway so it doesn't get a lot of natural light but I wanted to make sure that I had a neutral base colour without looking too washed out.

I did, however, noticed that when we had carpet, the hallway did still feel a little bit too washed out. So I knew that I wanted my staircase to pop against the neutral background of the walls. That's why I decided to go for the strong black and white #monochrome staircase. Add a bit of a statement to the hallway when you walk into the room. In the future, I may decide to soften it slightly by adding a runner.

East-facing Living Room

This is probably my favourite room in the house, in part because it was the first room that was completed. We decided that we wanted a feature wall for the fireplace to make that stand out even more and become a focal point in the room. Especially as we are often seated on the sofa opposite and it's such a lovely wall to look at. I decided on Hauge Blue because it's a good gender neutral colour, meaning that both my husband and I would love it! It had the additional bonus of brining elements of the outdoors in, which is why I tend to go for greens, neutrals and browns. The perfect balance for living in the countryside!

This room gets a huge amount of sunlight for the vast majority of the day as it is east facing. If has a feeling of being illuminated throughout most of the day and so we weren't scared about using such a dark colour as a feature wall.

Small Dark Kitchen

Rustoleum Chalk furniture paint is great for kitchen cabinets as you don't have to sand, you just need to clean though I would recommend testing that the paint adheres to the surface in advance by testing a patch on the inside first. It would then need to be sealed with was to protect the paint from and help you clean any spillages.

I used Ronseal tile paint, which did not require any prep work other than a clean and I didn't have to seal it either, it was just 1 coat of paint! Perfect! There aren't many colours to choose from so I purposefully selected grey so that I could get away with 1 coat but I imagine for pale colours you will need 2.

Dark West Facing Dining Room Dilemma

This is where I have gone wrong with my paint colours. I became too enamoured with the idea that the dining room colour had to be the same as the living room purely because they flow from one to the other almost like they are one big room. This has not worked. The dining room is the complete antithesis to my living room. It gets almost no natural sunlight not only because it is west facing so the sun doesn't reach this side of the house until the afternoon, but by then the tall hill and trees behind our house obstruct the light. So unfortunately, this room feels like it is permanently dark and the fact that I have painted it in a pale grey/blue colour means that all I have done is emphasised all of the shadows in the room.

So this room will need redecorating. I think that the best thing for a room like this and I hope that you don't have a west facing room with a huge hill blocking any sunlight, but if you do the best thing would be to go for a dark colour. I know that might sound counterintuitive but given that the light colour I have at the moment emphasises the shadows, a dark colour should absorb the shadows. Ultimately, what I need to do is embrace the darkness in this room. I am considering using up the rest of the Hague Blue paint that we have sitting in our cupboard because not only do we have enough but it will flow through from the living room really well and this paint should reflect any light and absorb any shadows.

I have other ideas for this room to, which means that I may not get around to decorating this room for a while. Keep your eyes peeled!

Lucy's Hillside House | Content Creator & Blogger