Changing the Paint Color: Yes or No?

Good question!  Should we change the paint color in our house? In my opinion, the answer is a big YES! Paint is such a quick (and relatively cheap) way to transform any room in your house completely.  Not only can it brighten up spaces but also make it feel more modern and refreshed.

We have done a lot of inside painting in our last three homes. For some or other reason, we seem to always buy homes with crazy color schemes and then spend a large chunk of our time changing it.

Our house in Rome, GA was a good example. It had the weirdest color combinations. Every room makeover that we did in that house included a fresh coat of paint. Since we were adamant about doing the work ourselves, we took a room by room approach and painted as we fixed up the rooms. You can find the Rome house updates if you scroll through my previous blog posts.

Our current house wasn’t that crazy when it came to wall colors, but it had a great deal of beige and brown going on. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to change the paint color for all the rooms to lighten it up.  I also wanted to change the trim, baseboard and crown molding colors as well.

Since painting a house one room at a time was a method that worked well for me, I created a plan and got busy painting. The room that absolutely had to be painted first was the dining room. It took four coats of paint to completely cover the brown and red walls!

Here is the before and after:

Next on my list was the blue family room. In this room, I also had to paint the trim, baseboard and crown molding. It also had a wall of windows that I needed to paint white. I left the windows for last and in the end, decided to have them done by the professionals.

Here is the family room before and after painting (complete with a House Hunters episode on television):

The windows before and after painting:

I also painted the kitchen and breakfast area. I used both greys – the darker grey from the family room went below the chair rail and the lighter grey used in the dining room was applied above the chair rail. I left the pantry doors as is but painted the baseboards, crown molding, back door and windows. Painting them all white made a huge difference in this darker room.

Here is the breakfast area before and after painting:

By this point, we had the double volume foyer and stairs left to paint. This area of the house had more wood trim, baseboards and also wooden doors – 5 of them to be exact. It was time to contact the professionals. Not only to get the best possible results but also since I’m not that comfortable on tall ladders.  We wanted the doors, trim and baseboards white and we also decided to add some white to the staircase.

Here is the foyer before and after painting:

This was also the perfect opportunity to complete painting all the bedrooms on the second floor.  Since all doors, trim and baseboards were already white upstairs, it was just a matter of painting the walls the same neutral grey I picked for downstairs.  We packed and moved all the smaller items from the rooms ourselves and left all the big furniture pieces in the centre of each bedroom.  The painters were able to come in, prep the walls and immediately get to painting.  Interesting enough, the professionals also worked room by room 🙂

I am so pleased with the way the house looks now. Painting all the walls a neutral grey went a long way to give this house a quick update and bring it out of the nineties.

What was the craziest color scheme that you had to fix with paint?