When 132 Colors Aren’t Enough (Part I)

To know me is to know that I overthink EVERYTHING!

This is Part I of the saga of our 622 day long search for the perfect wall color for the Parlor. I am happy to say that we finally have a verdict, we love it, and it’s quite possibly not what you would expect (but you will have to wait until tomorrow for that).

 

About a month after the house the house was ours in the spring of 2017 (yes it has been almost two years!) I chose two shades of a very dark green for the parlor. I picked up sample pots of Narragansett Green (HC-157) and Regent Green (2136-20) from Benjamin Moore and quickly slapped up a few sample areas around the parlor to see how we felt about them in different light. They are very close, but I liked Narragansett Green just a bit more than the darker Regent Green. So the decision had been made…. Or so I thought.

 

Six months later in October, my parents were visiting us in NYC from California and we drove them to Philly for a few days to see the house and show them our new city. Upon seeing the swatches of Narragansett and Regent on the walls, my mom remarked that she thought they were too dark.

Then two weeks after that, my in-laws came to see the house for the first time and my mother in-law remarked that she thought the Narragansett Green was much too dark. Usually when my mother tells she doesn’t like something, I dig in my heals and do it more (sorry Mom). But when both your mother and your mother in-law tell they really don’t like something, perhaps they’re onto something. Thus the hunt for the perfect color for the parlor was on again…

 

I was already in love with Farrow & Ball (F&B) paints after using it on our kitchen cabinets in our NY apartment. I also appreciated that they had a carefully curated collection of 132 colors. For those who are not familiar with F&B, they are a UK based company who are known for producing what is considered high end luxury paint. And to be truthful, in my experience of using it for the cabinets, it is indeed an amazing paint to work with. A big part of what makes their paint so luxurious is that they use a higher percentage of high quality pigments than nearly any other manufacturer which imbues a quality that has to be seen to be appreciated.

Of course this level of quality comes at a price… About $120 a gallon. This is about double what other paint manufacturers charge for their top of the line paints. When we did the kitchen renovations, that $120 a gallon price was totally worth it because we only needed one gallon. The paint was truly amazing to work with, the depth of color was phenomenal and it really made the room.

But, our 11.5’x21′ parlor is not going get done with one gallon of paint. In fact, to do the walls, trim, and ceilings, I estimate a total of five gallons of paint would be required. And as you can imagine, the difference adds up quickly. However, if you consider that wall paper can easily exceed $1,000, and that we will be spending several thousand on the room overall (furniture, rugs, lighting, etc…) what’s an extra $300 in the big picture?

Not.
That.
Much.

The parlor is the most important room in the house and it deserves a few nice things, and the extra cost will be completely forgotten after it is all done.

 

So with that, we both agreed that we are okay with investing in quality paint and using F&B for the living room. Woo Hoo! Now to chose one of those carefully curated 132 colors! Back in July of 2017, I first wrote about my ideas for the parlor and expressed my absolute love for the living room above done by interior designer, Karen Knox. So, before our moms expressed that the two greens were too dark, I was already evolving to blue. However, I struggled with it because, I really want a navy blue for the master bedroom. I can’t have dark blue in both rooms, can I?

No, no, I cannot let that happen. Between my vacillating from green to blue and our mothers’m input, I arrived at the notion that it could not be blue, and it had to be lighter in shade. Thats when I found the perfect color… Green Smoke (no 47)

 

This lighter smoky green is absolutely beautiful! I picked up a sample pot a few days later and the following weekend, I quickly put a sample patch on the wall smack dab in the middle of the Narragansett and Regent Greens, as well as several other areas of the room to get an idea of how it looks in different light.

 

OK! Problem solved, right?

Well….. Not really… Green Smoke is truly a beautiful color and it held the reigns as the winning color for several months. But, last year after moving in, I once again found myself swinging back to dark blue and trying to figure out how I could have dark blue in both the parlor and master bedroom. I was also thinking about the right color to work with the ugly beautiful tile in the vestibule and the reception hall. I turned back to the F&B color card to find a blue that is lighter than navy and would work with the vestibule color. That is when I came up with the following.

 

I ordered sample pots from Farrow & Ball in March, and threw two samples up on the wall right next to the Green Smoke sample from the previous fall. The middle color is Drawing Room Blue (no 253 now discontinued), and on the right is Pitch Blue (no 220). The Drawing Room Blue is the color I have first envisioned for our master bedroom in our New York apartment. We never got to do that before we decided to leave NYC for a new life in Philly, so I have carried that desire to our new house. I painted it the swath mostly for reference because I think it is actually too rich for the living room.

 

The Pitch Blue? Well, I LOVE the color in the room above. It is spectacular! I thought this would be a great option for our parlor because it is dark, but not too dark, it is lush, but not too over the top, and it is just plain beautiful. I even included this room in my post about Embracing the Dark Side (of color) last summer. I was so convinced that I had finally found the right color, I used the remainder of the Pitch Blue paint pot to fill in a larger spot on the wall at the back of the parlor above the rear door. I wanted us to live with it for a few months to see how we felt about it and to see how it looked in the room at different times of the day.

 

That was last spring… Once it was up, I thought I liked it…. Then I began to have doubts… All through the summer, I was kind of “meh”. Then one day this past fall, I looked up at the large swatch on the wall and all I saw was purple. I asked Y what he thought and learned that his appreciation of it had begun to wane as well. In a moment of frustration, I pulled out my old supply of Stiffkey Blue (no 281) from the kitchen renovation in New York and threw a swatch of that on the wall in hopes that it would satisfy me. But as beautiful as it was in our kitchen, it was not the right color for our parlor.

Ugh, back to square one again…

 

Then in September, Farrow & Ball announced nine new colors their palette of 132 colors (which involved the retirement of nine existing colors) and when they came out, I was all over one of them. That new color is Bancha (no 298). It is a beautiful rich warm green which I immediately thought would look great in the parlor. But because it was so rich, I thought perhaps I should balance it with a contrasting shade on the ceiling which brings me to another color from the new F&B collection, De Nimes (no 299).

 

De Nimes is a warm blue, but cooler than the green, and I thought it would make for the perfect balance for our parlor. So, I ordered some paint pots and as soon as they arrived, I slapped some up on the walls and we loved it…..

 

And then a few weeks later, we didn’t love it. I thought having the De Nimes on the ceiling would balance out the warmth of the green, but it just felt a bit off. Then Y told me to abandon the De Nimes altogether and go with Bancha all around. I was having my doubts. It’s not that Bancha isn’t a really beautiful color, it is…. But it’s not right for our house.

Again, back to square one.

And now you get to wait to find out what comes next. Stay tuned… Tomorrow, in Part II, I will wrap this up (it’s not as long as this post is) and reveal the final colors for the parlor.