Progress on the Upstairs Lounge – Painting the Trim Dark

Hello Friends!  Progress is moving along on our upstairs projects and even though I’ve not be checking in regularly, I have been documenting our efforts. Today, I’m excited to share some progress on the upstairs lounge.  We’ve finished painting the trim dark and the walls light and it’s quite the transformation.

I did a lot of research online before settling on colors in my head.  I wanted there to be a fair amount of contrast between the walls and the trim but I didn’t want it to be as drastic as black and white.  Even though we’ll be using this room as a lounge or Den, I wanted this room to still feel like a relaxing bedroom should it ever be used that way.

The main reason why I wanted to do dark trim and light walls was to highlight the new feature wall. While I wanted the trim to stand out, because there would be a lot of it on the feature wall, it was important for it to still feel light, warm and welcoming. This room isn’t huge and there is only one window that overlooks the hotel and bar next door. 

After my research, I had narrowed down my colors to a few options each.  B and I headed out to our local Lowe’s to look at swatches in person and unfortunately they were out of several of my choices.  Knowing the look I wanted, I made a game time decision and picked the trim and wall color from the HGTV swatches.

Wall Color:  Sherwin Williams Oxford White

Trim Color: Sherwin Williams Magnetic Grey

Oxford White is a soft, warm white.  It’s fresh and bright but not too cold feeling.  It’s definitely a new favorite!

The trim, SW Magnetic Grey changes depending on the light and time of day.  It’s grey but sometimes looks blue-ish and other times it looks green-ish and sometimes it looks pure gray. I honestly really love it in the room but seeing swatches online, I would have never considered picking it.  I’m so glad Lowe’s was out of swatches!

We’ve used a lot of both Benjamin Moore paint and Valspar paint in our house and I have to say that Valspar always gives us much better results.  BM usually needs two, maybe three coats whereas Valspar only needed one plus a quick touch up. We did not prime anything before painting.

With the room painted, we can now update the light fixture and I’ll be painting the window black.

Bedroom 3 Task List:

• Strip wallpaper
• Patch walls after wallpaper has been stripped and sand
• Prime walls
• Paint trim
• Paint walls
• Lay carpet or hardwoods*
• Swap out light fixture
• Add new curtains
• Move in furniture
• Recover / slipcover leather sofa and chair
• Add pillows
• Art for walls
• Refinish armoire that we’ll use for linens
• Sand and paint radiator
• Refinish coffee table