I posted a big wrap up of all of my ideas for my budget kitchen revamp a few weeks ago. Along the way I had an epiphany that the orange I wanted for the walls was all wrong and I decided to go with an aqua blue or turquoise instead. No, it isn't because turquoise happens to be the color of 2010. It will flow a lot better with the paint colors from the exterior of my house and living room and will definitely help counteract the massive orangeness of the country-ish oak cupboards in my kitchen.
The downside of this choice is that experience tells me that blue can be a really difficult color to get right. I tried to help my sister pick out a blue for her apartment. I don't even know how many samples she went through before she found the perfect one. Luckily, here's where I had some help step in.
Marsha from Hirshfield's had read how happy I was with the Devine Color paint I had purchased from Hirshfield's for my bedroom and offered me some free, no strings attached, Devine Color samples in their new pint size cans. Hurrah for big sample cans! Paint chips are handy, but they don't compare to color on a wall, and with the larger samples, I'll be able to try the paint in multiple areas of the room so that I know I can make a choice that will work no matter the wall or lighting.
I visited my usual paint store -- Hirshfield's Uptown (aka Lathrop Paint) and left with four samples from the Devine Color line. Two are in the blue family, one is a green I thought might work as an accent, and the last, a very light grey that could be a fall back in case I chicken out on aqua all together.
So, I have this fabulous paint that I can spread in large swaths across my walls. Only problem is, right now my kitchen walls still look like this (and this is one of the good ones).
The solution for now is to test out all of the paint on tagboard. Then I'll take the most promising candidates and slap them up on the wall.
The four Devine Color samples I chose from left to right are:
I like all of the colors but right now, Reef is the only one that seems like a possibility for the kitchen. I'm looking forward to trying that one on the wall. Pistachio Lime Beans is fun, but my kitchen is awkwardly shaped and I don't know that an accent wall would be appropriate. Foam is lovely, but too greyed down for this project. Frost is a very subtle grey that might be exactly perfect on my bathroom walls.
I also have numerous samples of blues from Benjamin Moore and my sister's rejected blues that I'll be trying out next.Fun!