I missed the color scheme for last week due to my website changes, but I promise this week’s is a good one! As you might know already, my family just bought a house and we’re moving in next weekend. It was a foreclosure, so that leaves us with a lot of work to do, first being the repainting of the bedrooms (and probably the living room too with its awful gray and pink combo). In preparation, I went browsing “Behr](http://www.behr.com paints for their interactive color program. I’ve also been using this as a way to find web color schemes but never told you because “ColorSchemer](http://colorschemer.com has kept me so busy I’d forgotten about Behr.

Behr has a really cool workbook sort of thing you can go through to pick just the right color. Of course it will look different in person than on the screen, but you can get a rough idea and work through the toughest part of the color-choosing process without ever stepping foot in Home Depot, which for me is great!

The tools we have to work with

!(shadow-r)http://static.flickr.com/55/159032637_92fedd9be2_m.jpg(master bedroom)! Here’s what I’m dealing with. The paint job on my new bedroom was a sort of faux sponge mess of colors way too deep in contrast and a little too pastel for my taste anyway. So I’m painting that room first. There are a few things I have to think about.

There is plenty of light coming into the room because one whole wall is covered with windows which get light all morning and most of the day (very good).

Sometimes in design your starting product will already have a great foundation to start from and you’ll have a lot more options when working with a color scheme

The trim on the windows has all been painted multiple times from what I can see and I hate to put yet another coat over it – but also have no time to strip it right now (very bad).

Very often too, you may find certain facets of your work are unchageable or very ineffective to change, like say, a horrible logo, and you have to work around it the best you can.

!(shadow-l)http://static.flickr.com/61/159032647_178e3e7588_m.jpg(master bath)! Here you can see the attached bathroom with it’s purple viney look. It also just so happens the best picture of the bathroom turned out to be the one where my daughter was coming out from hiding in the cabinet! So the purple look isn’t too bad and the fixtures are all new and bright white which I love against a rich color like that purple (which would otherwise be pretty ugly). I can sort of see the logic now in using the mauve combination in the bedroom but it was just horribly done. Here’s a tip: Faux painting should always be done with colors which are close together in hue and saturation. Don’t mix light and dark shades of different hues together like this – incredibly tacky. Colors like tan and brown would mix well together, or if you had to go mauve, do a soft mauve with a rich purple or other color similar so that they blend.

!(shadow-r)http://static.flickr.com/59/171077693_7f170ed0d6_m.jpg) Aside from those issues I have a quilt I made a couple of years ago. It took me a year to put it together so I’m not sure I want to give it up just yet. It is made up completely of reds and browns/tans and our room as always been coordinated to go with it. But… I’m also excited about getting my sewing machine out again since it’s been packed away this year while we’ve been living with my brother-in-law. I’m starting to think that I could work on a new one, and to be honest, I may just have to. But I went through my options with Behr anyway just to see what I could do and here’s what I came up with.

Color Scheme #1: Quilted Red

This is the color scheme I hope will work out so that I can keep my quilt. If it turns out painting over the green won’t work or my groom just doesn’t go for it, I’ll be onto the next option, but that’s the fun of this exercise – coming up with different options so that you have a choice in what you do.

!(border-c)http://static.flickr.com/51/170772789_9355a2565d_o.png(Red Scheme)!

Color Scheme #2: Quilted Blue

!(border-l)http://static.flickr.com/62/170772827_fe86ec1d7f_o.png(Blue Scheme)! I’d also like to go with this blue scheme because it gives me an excuse to get back to quilting and because it goes well with the bathroom. My only worry is that painting over the green around the windows in the room won’t be easy and so I might be left with my backup scheme.

I do love blue though, especially with brown. A lot of people are designing websites with brown these days too, using either pink or blue to contrast. In fact “Jared Christensen](http://www.jaredigital.com/ has been famous this year for using all three. And just yesterday without paying any attention to color, I instinctively grabbed a pair of light blue flip-flops and a pair of brown from Old Navy. I don’t know, this whole color thing must be automatic now. ;)

Color Scheme #3: Suffering with Green

!(border-r)http://static.flickr.com/78/170772807_d83056fda6_o.png(Green Scheme)! I call it “suffering” with green because I’d much rather do without the green (as if you couldn’t tell that by now), but I think the green is still workable. One thing that inspires me is all the camping trips I took as a kid. God has done an amazing job mixing brown and green together there, and having grown up with the “Redwoods](http://www.nps.gov/redw/, I can say that red works beautifully too if blended in just the right way.

My groom really doesn’t like dark colors on the walls and I get why – makes the space seem smaller – but with all the light coming in those windows in the front of the house, I’m really leaning toward that rich brown on the walls and a light trim (either tan or the green if I have to leave it).

Anyway, I hope you get some good use out of Behr’s color tool (and maybe buy some of their paint too – I’d hate to send people there and see their resources used for other purposes)! So here are the final color schemes, which as always, are downloadable from “Color Schemer](http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/index.php?id=4596.

!(plain)http://static.flickr.com/59/171074818_afb967b31e_o.png! !(plain)http://static.flickr.com/72/171074810_b0a1ce6797_o.png! !(plain)http://static.flickr.com/77/171074806_e04c85123a_o.png!

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