How to Repaint a Dim Emotional Space
by Emily Conrad
The daughter of a pair of habitual home remodellers, house flippers, and landlords, I learned as a girl to paint ceilings white in order to make a room feel more open. So, when my husband and I remodeled our own tiny house, I painted all those ceilings (and a number of the walls) white. We needed all the space we could get.
Then we moved to a house where the largest room on the first floor was painted a tan color similar to the color my coffee is after I've doctored it with plenty of cream and milk. The color isn't really that dark, but it'd been applied to all four walls and the ceiling.
Formerly, the room had been used as a living room, and having visited this house during that time, I can attest to the fact that the paint helped the space feel cozy and warm. But for me and my plan to use the space as a dining room, the color felt dim.
One of my first acts as lady of the house was to paint the ceiling white and two of the walls an off-white color called Dust Flats that has an ever-so-slight pink to it which makes it more charming that it sounds.
And just like that, the room feels so much lighter and more open. It's been the place of lingering meals and game nights, and I've made one spot at the table my usual workplace.
Nothing significant has changed about the room. Just some colors on the wall. The facts of the room--its dimensions, it's exits and entries, its windows--have remained the same. And yet the feel is different.
There are some rooms in my mind that need this kind of makeover. These rooms are made of situations in my life that are not what I'd like them to be. I made choices, and they didn't turn out the way I wanted. My mistakes painted rooms dark and depressing, but what could I do about them?
I didn't have any ideas until I was telling one of my brothers about it, and he said, "Why do you keep calling that a mistake?"
The question startled me into considering that there could be a different way of thinking about the choices I'd made.
Read more »
The daughter of a pair of habitual home remodellers, house flippers, and landlords, I learned as a girl to paint ceilings white in order to make a room feel more open. So, when my husband and I remodeled our own tiny house, I painted all those ceilings (and a number of the walls) white. We needed all the space we could get.
Then we moved to a house where the largest room on the first floor was painted a tan color similar to the color my coffee is after I've doctored it with plenty of cream and milk. The color isn't really that dark, but it'd been applied to all four walls and the ceiling.
Formerly, the room had been used as a living room, and having visited this house during that time, I can attest to the fact that the paint helped the space feel cozy and warm. But for me and my plan to use the space as a dining room, the color felt dim.
One of my first acts as lady of the house was to paint the ceiling white and two of the walls an off-white color called Dust Flats that has an ever-so-slight pink to it which makes it more charming that it sounds.
And just like that, the room feels so much lighter and more open. It's been the place of lingering meals and game nights, and I've made one spot at the table my usual workplace.
Nothing significant has changed about the room. Just some colors on the wall. The facts of the room--its dimensions, it's exits and entries, its windows--have remained the same. And yet the feel is different.
There are some rooms in my mind that need this kind of makeover. These rooms are made of situations in my life that are not what I'd like them to be. I made choices, and they didn't turn out the way I wanted. My mistakes painted rooms dark and depressing, but what could I do about them?
I didn't have any ideas until I was telling one of my brothers about it, and he said, "Why do you keep calling that a mistake?"
The question startled me into considering that there could be a different way of thinking about the choices I'd made.
Read more »
No comments have been added yet.
