Living Room Makeover – High Contrast Paint

I’ve lost count of the gallons of paint we’ve gone through since closing on the new house last week, but last I checked it was somewhere around 13. My arms might fall off by the time I’m finished typing this post. Totally worth it.

Just a couple of days ago, the living room looked like this…

We’ve been very lucky to already have such a great space to work with even in the beginning, and I know this room was already lovely as-is. Yellow is pretty, but I know it isn’t my style.

The one thing I’ve always loved about using neutral paint colors (P.S. I shared some of my favorites the other day) is that I can change my mind whenever I want when I’m decorating. I can adapt all of our rooms to suit the colors of the seasons throughout the year whenever the mood strikes. That flexibility is pretty awesome when you have decorating commitment issues.

Even though the French doors let in a good amount of natural light, the room still felt a bit too dark in person, so we painted the ceilings and trim using Benjamin Moore Aura paint in Simply White to instantly brighten things up. (Somehow this is the only photo I managed to get of the whole process as we were working our booties off.)

The doors and trim before were a beige color, so using that true white was like flipping on a switch to bounce around all of that gorgeous sunlight from the windows.

 I feel like I can see now!

We painted the walls Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee to give the room a slight creaminess.

I always wanted to paint our doors dark in our last house, so with the crisp, classic look we’re trying for in here, we painted all of the doors in Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron. It’s darker than charcoal but not quite a true black. I love love love the richness of it, so it’s perfect if you need a great high contrast pop in the room.

The power of paint never fails to amaze me.

Once we get a rug and accessories in here, it won’t feel so stark and hospital-like. (Here’s the big ol’ design plan.)  We’ll be switching out the ceiling fan for a new one and hauling in some of our furniture this weekend, so I’ll be sharing all of that on Instagram stories as that happens.

And we still have other little jobs like changing out all of the yellowy beige outlets and switches for white ones and doing something about our crazy pile of cords and cables.

I’m kind of sad that I won’t be able to decorate our mantel since there is really no where else to put our TV in this room. It was either hang it above the fireplace or place it in front of one of the windows. Booooooo.

But these cute little sconces I found on clearance for $16 at Lowe’s make up for it.

Right now, we just have these two accent chairs and area rug in here. Do you like them?!

So very coastal chic. 😉  Heehee!

At this point, we’ve painted four rooms and have three more to go before we officially move-in in a week and let my parents have their house back.

Thank you so much for the love and support you’ve given us since sharing all of the before tour excitement last week. I still can’t believe we actually get to live here. It’s like I keep expecting the sellers to show up to tell us we’ve been punked. This entire experience so far is very different from our last house (some of it more challenging), but I can’t wait for the journey ahead of us to make it feel more like home.

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Paint for this post was provided by Benjamin Moore.