The Mushroom Factor

I’ve been doing some painting lately. Just the mention of this puts my husband into eye rolls because he knows paint and me equal stress.

Stress for him, that is.

Here’s the problem: I’m a graphic designer and I work with color every day. My awareness of it is quite defined (my husband would say anal-retentive, with an emphasis on the anal).

But color on the limited environment of paper or a computer screen is an entirely different theory than color on the wall.

Color on a wall is affected by light, both natural and artificial. It’s affected by space and size. It’s also affected by colors of the ceiling, woodwork, furniture, and accessories. And then there’s the warm and cool issue. Like, did you know for beige alone, there are categorically three different shades?

Need I go on? And on, and on?

Well anyway, having all this color knowledge, yet not enough to understand paint, makes me a bit of a monster. I painted our living room one color last weekend. I repainted it another color this weekend. And I would probably repaint it still another color next weekend, except I’m tired and out of paint money.

However, with all this painting, I have come up with some helpful hints to pass along.

The first two are the products pictured above—the Cut ‘N Trim Cup and the Premium XL Tight Spots 2″ Angle Short Handle Brush. I bought the cup at Menards and the brush at Sherwin-Williams, and I spent less than $10 for both of them. (No one’s paying me to say this either.)

I cannot describe how much easier and quicker these two little items make cut-in painting around the trim. This is important, because not only do I get a little over-anal about color choice, I do about application as well (meaning I’m a very slow painter).

Lastly, and most importantly, is Maria Killam’s Colour Me Happy blog. Maria is a designer and color expert. Her blog is an absolute dream—beautiful photography, generous advice, and it’s all-around fun to read. When she offers her color expert workshop here in the Midwest, I plan to be the first to register.

Not only will I be even more colorfully defined as a graphic designer, I’ll be painting my walls only once!

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Tags: color, paint

This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Home Renovation, Interior Design, Painting, Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.