At Home With Merle

Choosing Paint Last

One of the most frequent questions we at House of Oak & Sofas are asked when people start buying furniture for a room is, “What do I buy first?” It’s really not a bad question when someone is overwhelmed with picking paint colors, floor covering, window treatments, accessories and furniture. Putting together all the right elements in that room can take serious thought and we at House of Oak & Sofas are happy to pitch in and help but one thing that makes the project flow easier is if the wall color of the room is not predetermined.

Of course in new construction, the walls are usually already painted, off-white, (it comes in five-gallon buckets) and the homeowner, who just forked over all his savings to get in the house, seldom is anxious to start painting. In the case of an existing room, the customer is often just so tired of the old, dirty walls that they run to the paint store and buy their favorite color of paint to coat the walls before the “decorating police” arrive to stop them.

Simply put, paint comes in more shades and colors than any other element in the room. So if you have the patience and the foresight to leave painting until last, you can come up with the very best color to make your room glow. If you plan to use an area rug in your room, imagine going rug hunting before or after the paint color is chosen. In the case where the room is already painted, you could easily eliminate 90% of what you might like otherwise. But having picked the rug previous to painting, the background color, or an accent color of the rug might just be a perfect color for the walls and really help to draw the wall and floor together for that desired “blended” finish.

Where To Start

Where do you start then, if you don’t start by painting? At House of Oak & Sofas we often suggest starting with an element that you love. A chair, a rug, a painting, an accent piece—anything that you feel passion for and know for certain you want in the room. This core decorating element could be something you already own, it could be a small accessory like a bowl or vase, or it could be an inexpensive yard-sale find. But once you set your heart on it, everything else will follow.

Imagine for a minute that you are redecorating an informal dining room, and you run across a charming, 100 year-old dressing table at a flea market and decide to purchase it to put somewhere in your house. During the trip home from your buying trip you can’t wait to decide where you will place this piece in your home, but more than that, can’t wait to simply see it again. You have passion for the piece. My suggestion would be that this piece could very easily be the inspiration for your dining room.

The dressing table is only about 30 inches wide and has a mirror on the back, has a brown cherry finish, and two shallow drawers. Hmmm, what function could this serve in a dining room? Immediately your mind starts to flow. You imagine serving dinner, clearing the table. How about a place to stack plates and silverware for a buffet? How about a clearing table? Or what about an over-sized plant stand with the plant to one side and a stack of linens beside it. Do you own a silverware chest? Then how about an official spot to hold it so dinnerware is always at the ready?

Once you have settled on the first piece, the rest of the room starts to flow. You have the wood and stain color. Other wooden elements will stay in the stain color, but as you have read from other of my posts, do not necessarily need to be of the same wood species. The preferred look now is to mix woods but stay in the same color family. So in our dining room we might next choose the table and chairs in a complementary wood that maintains the brown cherry finish of the “silverware table” and go on to choose a rug of tone-over-tone coral tones over brown in a traditional pattern. Instead of a china cupboard, you find an old oversized server that has great door and drawer storage for your placemats and serving pieces and decide to paint it satin black since the finish is in poor condition. Likewise the large over-sized mirror above the server is a yard-sale find and the wood finish looks great with the brown cherry of the other pieces. Finally a centerpiece container that features mixed colors, including black, in a geometric pattern.

Final Stages

Now here we get to the final stages of the room and we can have some fun by doing a bit of extra work. You have six dining chairs and the seats could be covered with about 3 yards of fabric. This gives you one more opportunity to coordinate the black, coral and brown color theme that you have going on and can make the theme much more intentional. Each time you add an element in the room that uses at least two of the colors already chosen you solidify your theme. House of Oak & Sofas would be happy to cover the chair seats for you or give you pointers on how to do-it-yourself.

Although there are other items such as art and accessories that we might add to the room, we have finally arrived at a good place to choose the wall color. Immediately, with the known colors, I can imagine a soft cocoa brown color several shades lighter than the background brown of the rug. The black server will have a stunning appearance next to the cocoa and a couple of trees or plants will contrast well. A muted coral color might also be used but overall I think the brown, perhaps in the coral-tinged range, would add the kind of warmth and stability one would appreciate in a cozy dining room.

So now it’s time, after dinner in your new room of course, to dream your own room. Pick any room in your house and set off on a decorating adventure. You might invite a friend to help you put it all together. Finally remember that the team at House of Oak & Sofas is full of ideas to help you complete your project!

Keep sending me questions about your decorating problems — direct them to merle@houseofoak.com.

Merle Wenger