Sunday, July 8, 2012

Picking a color palette for your room

I am getting a bit tired of the colors in my bedroom.  When we moved in here 11 years ago, we painted the walls a lovely blue that was reminiscent of the Colorado skies we had just left.  I still really like the color, but I think I'm ready for a change.

I'm pretty good at knowing when I DON'T like a color, but pretty bad at knowing which color(s) I would like instead.  But then I saw an ad in a magazine for MyColortopia.com.  You can upload a photo with colors that inspire you, and the website will generate a color palette of Glidden paint colors for you.

One of my favorite things to look at is Lake Michigan.  The blues of the sky and the water plus the browns of the sand make me happy.  So I dug around in some old photos of trips to Lake Michigan and I found these two that might work.

I went to MyColortopia.com, scrolled down to the box labeled "My Image Inspiration" and clicked on "Go To Tool".  Then I was prompted to upload my photo (2MB max). Once the photo thumbnail was visible, I could drag the little crop box around my photo until the colors I liked best were in the box.  I clicked on "Show Colors" and it gave me several options to choose as my favorite main color.  (See the middle column in the screen capture below.)


My favorite color from those options was "Creamy Blueberry" so I selected that color, and the website generated three 3-color palettes using that color.  If you mouse over each of the colors in the palette, the Glidden paint color name appears. You have the option at this point to print the information, or email it to yourself or pin it to Pinterest.

I took a screen capture and made my own little reference card in Photoshop that showed the photo and the three palette options - along with the Glidden paint color names.


And here are the results I got after uploading the beach picture.


I liked a couple of the paint colors from this photo. The one that matched the sky (Blue Marina) is very similar to the current color on my walls so I was curious to see what Glidden would pair with it.  And then I also generated a palette using "Deep Blue Shadow" that matched the water in the photo.

That was a fun little exercise!  But I'm no closer to knowing what to do with my room because I like all these palettes!  If I had to pick a favorite right now it would be the middle option for the lighthouse picture (silver dust - buttered sweet corn - creamy blueberry).  But then what?  Do I paint the walls Creamy Blueberry?  That might be a bit much.  Maybe the walls are Silver Dust and the curtains/bedding are Creamy Blueberry and the accents are Buttered Sweet Corn?  Any suggestions?

1 comment:

  1. Interesting! I like the idea of capturing the mood of a favorite scene by using the same colors.

    Creamy Blueberry is a kind of dark color. If your room is smallish or doesn't get much sunlight, a dark color might be too much. Maybe you could use it on the trim or on just one wall? I have seen some really artsy effects obtained by painting one wall a darker color; in a bedroom, it's usually the wall behind the head of the bed.

    P.S. I came here from Works-for-Me Wednesday and I think you forgot to link back to there.

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