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Living Room Paint Color Ideas...
Picking a Paint Color for Your Living Room
Painting is a reasonably inexpensive way to create a whole new look for any room but no decorating can be classed as completely straightforward. Decorating tends to be both time consuming and messy and involves a degree of upheaval, no matter how experienced you are at decorating.
Living Room Paint Color Ideas: Preparing Your Living Room
However, if you take it in easy stages and prepare well before you start, the job of painting your living room becomes much more enjoyable. Naturally, it goes without saying that, before you start any painting you need to prepare the surface adequately, removing any old paint, dirt, wax or grease and wiping away any dust that is likely to prevent the new paint from adhering appropriately to the surface.
After all, if you are going to the trouble and upheaval of decorating, you may as well do the job as well as possible and achieve an excellent appearance at the end.
Living Room Paint Color Ideas: Choosing the Right Paint Colors
You need to select the paint colors that reflect not just your taste, but create the overall mood you want to create in your revamped living room. Browse through the many decorating magazines on offer—take your time to peruse the ideas in some of the better known 'glossies' such as the Ideal Home magazine whose April 2009 edition features a living room decorated in duck egg blue and taupe.
The effect is overwhelmingly clean and unsullied, providing sensations of clean lines reminiscent of spring and fresh air, giving the aura of a gentle breeze redolent with daffodils and hyacinths on the air. You also need to consider textures as well as colors when painting your living room as these give the impression of depth which can add that extra dimension to any decorating scheme.
There are many ways of painting textures directly onto your walls, with the Polycell range offering ready-mixed textured paints that just need to be painted on for the perfect finish. When considering colors when painting your living room, you always keep in mind natural lighting and the effects of different weather patterns that are prevalent in the area where you live. More energy is emitted from warm colors than colors that belong to the cold part of the spectrum.
Living Room Paint Color Ideas: When There's No Natural Light
If, for instance, when you are decorating your living room, it does not get too much natural light and your living room gives the impression of being drab when it does catch the light, then you need to incorporate tones from the warmest part of the color spectrum.
These colors form the red/yellow part of the spectrum and feature colors such as orange, coral, pink, cadmium yellow, ultramarine, burnt umber and sepia, amongst others. It is also important to consider opacity when choosing colors, with some colors having more intensity of color depth than others.
Colors with enhanced opacity are those such as the colors found in the garden dahlia: bright yellows, coppery orange, deep purple and the deep, rich opulence of burgundy.
Living Room Paint Color Ideas: Colors for Large and Small Living Rooms
Chocolate also provides hints of warmth which, if your living room is particularly large, can be painted on all the walls, with mink being painted onto the coving around the top of the walls and offset by the white of the ceiling.
Conversely, if your living room is small, choose an accent wall and just paint this wall chocolate, with the other three walls a gentle, warm shade of coral or sepia and the coving perhaps a gentle mink color.
When considering the overall, finished look you are trying to achieve from painting your living room, you need to consider your room's size and shape, with any architectural protuberances such as staircases, windows, doors and alcoves being taken into account.
You can alter the whole feel and appearance of your living room simply by the colors you paint these additional features: they can be picked out in white so they stand out and appear fresh and clean, or they can be painted in the same shades as the rest of your living room so that they recede into the background.
You can make your paint colors emphasize features and, equally, your paint colors can hide features and, the choices you make when painting your living room are going to reflect the finished product. Similarly, in today's homes, many of which are quite small, you can emphasize the sense of space by the colors you choose and by paying particular attention to painting techniques.
If your intention is to give your living room the appearance of space, choose pale greens, such as mint, or a soft blue such as the duck egg blue that is featured in the April 2009 edition of the Ideal Homes magazine.
Butter yellow also opens up a room, making it appear larger and brighter by reflecting back the natural light. You could even choose one wall as an accent wall and paint wide stripes vertically in butter yellow and the other three walls just plain butter yellow, with white coving and a white ceiling: this room would give a lovely feeling of space and infinity.
Living Room Paint Color Ideas: Changing the Look of Your Furniture
Natural wood furniture can be painted if it is looking a little battered, possibly choosing a shade to complement the main theme, or one where the furniture blends into the main color scheme. Make use of painting techniques such as stenciling and add new handles. You may have a coffee table that has seen better days.
This could easily be painted and the top stenciled, then a sheet of glass placed over the top, with an ornamental trim of dowelling placed around the edges to prevent the glass from sliding. Painting would give your furniture a completely new lease of life and save you a considerable amount of money by not having to replace your existing furniture with new.
Use light, both natural and artificial, to create a sense of space in your living room, keeping heavy drapes away from large windows and using uplights and downlights to brighten up darker corners. If necessary, give both the windows and doorways a new coat of fresh white gloss pain to brighten up the feel of your living room.
Living Room Paint Color Ideas: Consider Matte Finishes
When painting the walls to give your living room the sense of being bigger, remember to consider texture and opacity. A matte finish is generally a better choice when painting your living room walls, using a water based paint which is going to dry quickly. Whereas when you want to create the sense of luminosity into your living room, consider eggshell or one of the velvet finishes.
This will give your living room a sense of opulence and create a very chic feel. As the living room is usually the first room your guests get to see, they are likely to formulate their opinions about you from the decoration they first encounter in your living room: chic sophistication will impress any visitor to a home you can be proud of.
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