To Colour Fan or not to Colour Fan?

[VanessaTony 3,567]

Tony and I bought a house. It's an older house (1930's I think) and when we moved in the walls.. omg... the previous owners are the "obsessed with wallpaper border" people. Almost every room has a different border. Watering cans in the kitchen, tartan like patchwork hearts in the main bedroom, baby bears and ducks and giraffes in the second room. The bathroom was particularly sexy with stark white walls and multi-colored sponge applied sea animals (no two were alike and most were deformed) and the living room was a tan colour with a lovely smokey upper (and candle marks up the walls).. Oh.. and I can't NOT mention the orangy tinged wood that's EVERYWHERE... trim, doors, door entry ways, kitchen and bathroom cupboards and windows (my FIL said it's orange because of the lacquer or something like that as it aged).. SO understandably painting is in order.

My problem is this... picking colours. I seriously don't know what colour I want where. The living room is now a violet like colour which is actually really nice but now I'm stuck. If we have to re-paint the living room that's fine but I don't really want one colour throughout the house... it's hard to find colours that work with the wood and to get colours that flow okay. While the house isn't open concept you can look from the front door (foyer area) through the living room to the kitchen so the colours can be too opposite.

So, if you were me, would you

1. Go to a hardware store and stare at the (free paper thingy) samples till you see a colour you like?

2. Take one of each colour (the free sample thingys) and take them home?

3. Look online (I tried looking online but as proven by the colour thats on my wall right now, what it looks like on your screen/camera isn't what it looks like in person)

4. Pay for a colour fan?

That's the colour fan I'm looking which isn't exactly cheap at $40. I'm leaning towards the fan though because:

1. All the colours are together

2. I feel kinda cheap and dodgy taking EVERY colour sample.. not to mention the sheer number available!

3. Taking individual samples I might miss the colour that goes better simply because I didn't pick the sample.

What do you think? Do you really think it's stupid to pay for it when they're free? Do you think I should just "suck it up" and collect every sample?

P.s. I should mention I've been thinking about this for months (we bought the house in late September 2010). This isn't a spur of the moment decision. I sit/walk around thinking about the colours I want and then look online but can't seem to find the colour I really want.. and there nowhere nearby that has the samples, I have to wait until we go into town and again, the sheer number is overwhelming!! I keep swinging towards getting the colour fan but then I worry I'm just being stupid. HELP!

[Cybele 0]

Tony and I bought a house. It's an older house (1930's I think) and when we moved in the walls.. omg... the previous owners are the "obsessed with wallpaper border" people. Almost every room has a different border. Watering cans in the kitchen, tartan like patchwork hearts in the main bedroom, baby bears and ducks and giraffes in the second room. The bathroom was particularly sexy with stark white walls and multi-colored sponge applied sea animals (no two were alike and most were deformed) and the living room was a tan colour with a lovely smokey upper (and candle marks up the walls).. Oh.. and I can't NOT mention the orangy tinged wood that's EVERYWHERE... trim, doors, door entry ways, kitchen and bathroom cupboards and windows (my FIL said it's orange because of the lacquer or something like that as it aged).. SO understandably painting is in order.

My problem is this... picking colours. I seriously don't know what colour I want where. The living room is now a violet like colour which is actually really nice but now I'm stuck. If we have to re-paint the living room that's fine but I don't really want one colour throughout the house... it's hard to find colours that work with the wood and to get colours that flow okay. While the house isn't open concept you can look from the front door (foyer area) through the living room to the kitchen so the colours can be too opposite.

So, if you were me, would you

1. Go to a hardware store and stare at the (free paper thingy) samples till you see a colour you like?

2. Take one of each colour (the free sample thingys) and take them home?

3. Look online (I tried looking online but as proven by the colour thats on my wall right now, what it looks like on your screen/camera isn't what it looks like in person)

4. Pay for a colour fan?

That's the colour fan I'm looking which isn't exactly cheap at $40. I'm leaning towards the fan though because:

1. All the colours are together

2. I feel kinda cheap and dodgy taking EVERY colour sample.. not to mention the sheer number available!

3. Taking individual samples I might miss the colour that goes better simply because I didn't pick the sample.

What do you think? Do you really think it's stupid to pay for it when they're free? Do you think I should just "suck it up" and collect every sample?

P.s. I should mention I've been thinking about this for months (we bought the house in late September 2010). This isn't a spur of the moment decision. I sit/walk around thinking about the colours I want and then look online but can't seem to find the colour I really want.. and there nowhere nearby that has the samples, I have to wait until we go into town and again, the sheer number is overwhelming!! I keep swinging towards getting the colour fan but then I worry I'm just being stupid. HELP!

I have a box of the color samples from the Sherwin Williams paint store here and they were free. I told them that I had a 4 bedroom house and I intended to buy every can of paint from them after the different color combinations were chosen. They happily offered me a box, pulled each and every color sample for me, and packed them in the box for me themselves. Why pay when you can get free? They print out the samples and place them there for people to take, believe me, the cost is figured in the cost of the paint!

[KaiserD 12]

$40 sounds excessive! I'd go with the samples, though it is helpful having them altogether like that. I wonder if you can buy something like that with CMYK/RGB values on...

Sounds like you've got a big job ahead of you, good luck!

[LaL 418]

I wouldn't get a color fan because there are so many colors right off that bat that I would reject. Kinda like a waste of time/money/paper. I would just pick sample colors for each room in various shades.

[Penguin_ie 6,002]

Go to some local stores and ask if they have spare/ outdated fans.

[VanessaTony 3,567]

Go to some local stores and ask if they have spare/ outdated fans.

Ooo I never thought of that. Lowes doesn't even keep them in stock... /sigh. But can't hurt to ask

[VanessaTony 3,567]

So (for those who care ) I ended up getting this fan: http://www.lowes.com/pd_233028-86-OP14505/69_4294935484+4294849974_40_?catalogId=10051&productId=3054313&Ne=40&identifier=Fan+Deck&N=4294935484+4294849974&langId=-1&Ns=p_product_prd_lis_ord_nbr|0||p_product_quantity_sold|1&storeId=10151&searchQueryType=1 and I LOVE it. I found a few other pics of it online and determined it was better to pay $20 for it than $45 for the other (with postage etc). There are 1224 colour samples, and there are sheen guides as well. It's just so fat (i.e. so many colours!) I'm really happy I bought it because there's no way I could easily sort through so many colours if I'd just pulled the free ones off the wall.

So anyway, highly recommended if you're interested

Edited March 5, 2011 by Vanessa&Tony

[Staashi 371]

Here's my suggestion: evaluate an overall color that you like, say green. Pick one shade of green topaint the whole house in. do accent walls with a darker shade from the same pallet. Also, you will probably need to do some serious primer work, and if your ceilings and trim work are orange from smoke, start there with the painting.

Good luck. Hubby and I painted our whole house in August 2007. Good times.

[sachinky 465]

This is my absolute ultimate dream. Buying a house and then painting it. I know exactly what shade each room will be in for the house I will one day purchase and grow old in. Oh, V, I'm so jealous. Happy-house-painting!

[TBoneTX 48,435]

So (for those who care)

Thank you for giving us, the, uh, Lowesdown on this, si man.

[웃 910]

I recently closed on a fixxer-upper and have spent at least 100 hours watching HGTV. Here are some tips (be sure to also click on the video tab to watch some of the vids):

http://www.hgtv.com/...lors/index.html

Edited March 6, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[VanessaTony 3,567]

This is my absolute ultimate dream. Buying a house and then painting it. I know exactly what shade each room will be in for the house I will one day purchase and grow old in. Oh, V, I'm so jealous. Happy-house-painting!

Thanks!! I'll show you an example of the horrors we face:

Bathroom! Ignore the orange stickers, they're the winterization stickers.. some were fun to remove. This bathroom is now light blue

Kitchen. The border has watering cans and bird houses.. not really a kitchen theme. We're not going to replace the whole cabinets (they're sturdy.. just hideously coloured! and we have lots of cabinets 'cause we have 10ft high ceilings.. at least) so we're going to do this: http://www.rustoleumtransformations.com/ at least the cabinet part, I'd prefer to actually replace the countertop seeing there's not much anyway.

I love having a project and now that our taxes were filed and we know how much $$ we're getting back we can start planning the next room (which is the kitchen). We did the living room and bathroom first. We're still hoping to pull up the carpet in the living room though (previous owners apparently had 6 or more dogs.. much as I PREFER carpet to hardwood floors, I just dread to think what the previous owners did on/to it)

Edited March 6, 2011 by Vanessa&Tony

[VanessaTony 3,567]

I recently closed on a fixxer-upper and have spent at least 100 hours watching HGTV. Here are some tips (be sure to also click on the video tab to watch some of the vids):

http://www.hgtv.com/...lors/index.html

Thanks Love HGTV. Watching a lot of the DIY network too I have plans to make a mirror for our entry way (tony works at a glass factory atm so can get a decent prize on the size/shape I want)

[TBoneTX 48,435]

I'll show you an example

V., I would tell you that you have a nice house, si man, but you'd reply, "Oh, don't mansion it," no man.

[sachinky 465]

So are you gonna lighten the cabinets? What color are you thinking of for the kitchen?

Light blue for the bathroom sounds nice.

Edited March 6, 2011 by sachinky