Womp . . . womp . . . wommmmp.

Primed and ready for the test paint!
(iPhone pictures, so don't judge.)

After weeks -- nay, months! -- of procrastinating, I finally got out the paint and prepared to tackle the ghastly green walls of the living room.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had bought a sample pot of Wickham Gray, a colour that I had really admired at my sister's house and which I had seen praised by designers.

It's a cool grey, with blue-ish undertones. I selected three spots to test my colour:

• The darkest corner in the room.
• Above the arch to the dining room. This receives the most light from the large picture window, but also has lamps directed at it.
• Above the fireplace, as I had concerns about how the colour would compliment the mantel and stone hearth.

After priming with white paint (ceiling paint, if you must know), I excitedly applied the Wickham Gray. Aside from being really impressed with how well the Benjamin Moore paint went on and covered, I was really happy with the colour.

In the afternoon light, the darkest corner was much improved. 

GAH! That green looks positively vomitous! It's not really that yellow in real life.
The colours are really hard to capture in these pictures.

The arch to the dining room was brighter. 

See just how much cheerier the dining room is? I wish I could get that light into the living room!

And the fireplace wall looked fine, though Steve said he wasn't too sure.

Grey wall with bisque mantel.

But as the sun began to set and our lights came on, something happened. The dark corner still looked better.

The arch was fine.

Muuuuuch better in grey. Much.

But the fireplace! Cue the sad trombone: womp . . . womp . . . wommmp. 

As I looked in from the dining room, it suddenly seemed that the bricks in the surround looked dingy, like they were smoke-stained or dirty. They hadn't looked like that with the green. And I knew they were as clean as they were going to get, as I'd scrubbed them with brick cleaner earlier. 

The mantel itself was okay, but the bricks . . .

Ignore the splotches of white paint from the original wooden mantel.
Getting rid of those is on my to-do list.

And that impression only got worse as the evening wore on. It was enough to make me want to white-wash the bricks!

Steve has suggested that we paint that small bit of wall a different colour, but I'm not sure. I'd prefer to have the room all one colour. In either case, I'm really glad I spent the $8 on a sample, and that I painted several spots in the room.

I might try one of these from the designers quoted on the Satori blog: 

Even from these digital samples, you can see how much better they would compliment the brick.

UPDATE: today, with an overcast sky and no artificial lighting, the Wickham Gray looks fine, of course. But I have to trust what I saw last night. I'm leaning toward putting an accent colour over the fireplace, as Stephen suggested. (I should listen to that guy. He isn't always wrong.)

Next up: another sample pot! And without delay because the living room currently looks like this. Ugh.

Messy and crowded.

P.S. Stephen has already asked when we can move the furniture back and how much painting I'm expecting him to do.