BEST PAINT COLORS FOR BEDROOM WALLS

Paul: Welcome to another Trusted House Painter color design podcast, I’m your host Paul Stein. Your bedroom is where your mind, your body and your soul connect every night to rejuvenate heal and gather inspiration for tomorrow’s adventures. It’s also the place you rest your head and turn off the noise from the busy world around you, so choosing the right paint color for your bedroom walls makes the difference between feeling alive, creative and vibrant or sluggish, restless and anxious.

Choosing the right bedroom color doesn’t have to be complicated and at Trusted House Painter we want you to wake up refreshed, energized and ready to paint the world a better place. By downloading the free pdf “Bedrooms – best paint colors for bedroom walls” found only at trustedhousepainter.com.

And on today’s show we have the author of this free pdf Carla Hedman. Carla Hedman is a professional color design consultant who’s helped thousands of homeowners transform their bedrooms and homes into a sanctuary of calm and the castle they call home. Welcome to the show Carla, how are you today?

Carla: I’m good thank you Paul how are you today?

Paul: I’m doing good I’m doing good. I had a good rest my my bedroom wall colors are nice and white, it feels good. So before we get into the factors into this pdf and all the factors of choosing the best paint colors for bedroom walls I want to know from you how does the color of your bedroom walls make any difference to the feel of the room?

Carla: Well you know it sounds a little bit crazy but you actually are affected by the colors around you and colors can they actually have an energy to them. So they can typically in the cooler side of this color wheel they tend to be a little bit more calming and relaxing. And warmer colors do exactly that, they feel warmer. They evoke a sense of hugging or an element of warmth really is what you’re looking for. So it can make you feel like you said earlier alive. It can calm you down, it can make you inspired. It can quiet a call like a really restless mind, it can actually calm that down. So here’s what we’re trying to do is to help you guys find the perfect colors for your bedroom for the look you’re trying to achieve.

Paul: Awesome well let’s let’s get right into it. So if you’re watching this video you can download your free pdf copy of this pdf, “Best paint colors for bedroom walls” at trustedhousepainter.com and follow along as we discuss some of the factors when choosing the paint colors for your bedroom walls. So Carla let’s start off with point number one in the pdf – Soft and Warm Colors. What do you mean by that?

Carla: So basically when I say soft I mean something that’s been muted. It’s not a really intense color; everything is a little bit quieter, it’s muted. What that means really, is that it’s typically not a true color. It tends to have a smokiness or a haziness that comes across it and that sort of makes it soft.

And then the warm, the warm tends to come in the ends of the warm color wheel. So in the color wheel you’re looking at yellows, reds and oranges. That being said, you don’t have to have yellow, red or orange on the wall. We can always have them as a neutral and so that can be your undertone in your white or your beige or your sand – and those guys all fall within that color scheme.

Paul: Okay, so just like for example just a little bit of pigment in in the paint color. There’s not a lot of pigment, it’s not a it’s not popping out at you in other words right?

Carla: Exactly, exactly. So it just is a, you know, it’s not a huge impact. When you do colors like that, what it often does is it gives you a really great backdrop for all of your decor. So that way, what your eye is drawn to is your decor. So again if you want to evoke an element of quiet in the space even though you’ve gone soft and warm, if you do very soft quiet colors with the soft quiet walls it still feels soft and quiet.

Carla: So say you’re using a creamy color on your walls and then you use creams and beiges in your decor so you don’t have a lot of contrast. So it still feels warm but it feels quiet as well.

Paul: Awesome that’s great, so that’s point number one in the pdf. The second factor that you identify in the pdf is rooms that feel light and airy. What do you mean by that?

Carla: Well what I like to say, well light is pretty easy you know. You think it’s not dark so it’s bright or light. And airy, think of breezy fresh, you know you don’t think warm you feel like it’s just like a little kiss of a breeze so it’s not cold it’s not, it’s not hard on the eyes. Really what those sort of light and airy sort of feels are just that it doesn’t feel like colors coming at you. There’s a bit of a presence of color but again, it’s pretty quiet just like the soft and warm. It’s just quiet but we’ve gone a little cooler so you’re going to end up on the cooler side of the color wheel. So you’re going to be looking at blues and greens and sometimes purples in this direction.

Paul: I see so perhaps if you had like dark hardwood floors or even like a dark wood interior something like a light and airy color will help offset the dark cavey feel. Is that what you mean? 

Carla: Exactly, exactly!  So it does tend to be really nice to sleep in they’re great from great kind of colors for bedrooms because you know a lot of people like to sleep with the window open same idea you get that nice cool breeze same idea with that. It’s very relaxing and calming on the mind.

Paul: Nice! Excellent. Well that one point factor number two light and airy goes along with this next point. The third point which is bright and cheerful. Now we’re broadcasting right now from the pacific northwest area and it’s not always sunny here. There’s a lot of gray and whenever I travel down to Mexico or go to hawaii or puerto rico I notice that there’s a lot of bright and cheerful colors. So that brings us on to this third point which is bright and cheerful. What colors, what examples would you give that would help create a bright and cheerful room?

Carla: Well, bright and cheerful typically tends to be an actual color. We’re not talking about neutrals at this point I would say that bright and cheery means a color. And you can go a little brighter, a little bit more vibrant because you are looking for a little bit more energy. And again it’s the colors give energy off on them, so the more intense the energy you want the more vibrant you’re going to go.

So if for example, you want it to feel sunny in your room then maybe you want to pick a sunny yellow. For those of us in the Pacific Northwest that it tends to be gray, you know roughly six months of the year outside, maybe a little bright and sunny isn’t a bad thing you know. So maybe you can pretend that you’re in Mexico for those times even though you can’t be.

Paul: Yeah, it’s funny because as I drive down the road I kind of see those people that take this factor, the bright and cheerful, they take it to the exterior of their homes. And I see that because the one house is gray, the next one’s a neutral gray, the next one’s a brown the next one’s a taupe. And then there comes like a big yellow house or something and I can see that they’ve tried to bring that to the exterior of their house – to bring a little bit more bright and cheerful. So bringing that into your bedroom allows a little bit more space, a little bit more color and as you said the vibrational essence of the of the color really adds a little bit of life to your room, right?

Carla: So if you’re feeling a little sluggish maybe that’s a good way to add a little bit of color or energy into your space.

Paul: Well the next factor here the factor number four on the pdf the free pdf, best paint colors for your bedroom walls – which you can download for free at trustedhousepainter.com along with other pdfs that Carla has made that help you choose the best colors for your home for your bedroom and elsewhere. The factor number four that I really like and this is where what my wife really likes when we painted our home, was quiet and calm. Because our lives tend to be busy tends to be noisy and it seems like you know the more we go further down into the 2020’s this next decade it seems like there’s a lot of noise out there. And for me being able to turn off the lights, close the blinds, turn off every all the noise in my head and lay back and sleep really helps me get a good rest so that I’m creative and vibrant the next day. So the next factor that we’re talking about is a Quiet and Calm room. This is a feel of the room. Explain what you mean by that.

Carla: Well what I mean usually by that and that can come into sort of the soft and warm and the light and airy, they do fall in there but what I’m also counting in this one is that sort of calming element is something that’s been neutralized. It’s all about neutral or neutralized color. That’s what’s going to give you that calming effect, that quieter more sort of restorative feel after sleeping. You want to feel like you’ve actually slept the night away instead of tossed and turned, and you know when you go to bed at night that sort of feel just sort of sets the mood for you. You wake up in the morning and it actually helps you in the morning too. So if you feel like you had a rough night maybe you wake up and it’s calm in the morning to see to wake up to a soft calm you know quiet space sometimes helps too.

Paul: Yeah, and one thing I noticed, well at least my wife she’s quite the designer. She adds a little bit of element to our life for sure. One thing I noticed is that our room is quiet and calm. The paint colors in our room is quiet and calm and what she does is that she adds a nice rich warm duvet cover on the bed. Or some nice color pillows on the bed, which really adds to the room. She sometimes hangs a green plant in the corner of the room and it helps create that calm and quiet feel a little bit. It almost feels like I’m in nature in a way, So that’s what I’ve noticed helps me.

Carla: That’s a really great way to to do that is to bring the outside in. So bringing in a little bit of natural elements into your space sort of you know restores where you’re at because we’re all part of the earth, we need to bring a little bit of that outside in. 

Paul: I guess the last element within this, or one last factor within this free pdf, Best Paint Colors For Your Bedroom Walls found at trustedhousepainter.com is factor number five, rich and elegant colors. What do you mean by rich and elegant colors in your bedroom and when would someone want to apply that in their bedroom?

Carla: Well when I say rich and elegant I typically mean something that’s a little bit more saturated or a color that has a bit more pigment. And again in order for it to feel richer or more elegant typically it tends to have a neutralized element in it.

It’s not that you can’t get away with jewel tone colors and make them look rich and elegant but sometimes it just takes a little bit more skill if you’re uncertain. Always neutralize your colors because it’ll be easier for most people to live with in the long term. So basically what that means is think of a state like you want to have your room. You want to be a king or a queen you want to have that estate room, you want it to be rich you want it to be elegant. Maybe you have really big scale fancy furniture and you want to sort of hold the weight of these things.

Think of really heavy furniture. Sometimes too light on the wall all you see is really heavy furniture. You put something a little bit more intense on the walls, a little denser, a little richer and you’ll end up actually making the room feel more elegant.

Paul: Interesting, I was going to ask you, is this tip the rich and elegant feel of the room is that something only reserved for big bedrooms like say 15 by 20 bedrooms? Or could you use a rich and elegant feel in your room if it’s a really small basement suite bedroom? Can you do that?

Carla: You could, you certainly could but you have to make sure that how you decorate it also goes along with the wall color. So you want to stay with the same scheme so you know if you’re using rich and elegant colors decorate rich and elegant too. Even if it is as much as you can afford you know make it look as elegant as you can.

Paul: Now, one thing I do know about colors though being a professional painter myself, is that generally when you look at a color swab it tends to dry a little bit darker and then once you put it on the wall it actually looks a little bit darker. So would that be dangerous putting a rich and elegant color in a dark room in a small room? Could that make it more cave-like or…?

Carla: Yes, it could certainly do that. Really, what your eye is drawn to is contrast. So you could really just end up having less contrast on your ceiling. So maybe don’t do white on your ceiling, do a darker color on your ceiling and a darker on your wall and basically it’s definitely dark, I’m not going to take away from that it’s, really absorbing a lot of light but it is making it sort of moodier if you will and that’s where you really need to address your your lighting.

So if this is a room that you do a lot of reading in maybe that’s not a great idea. You want to think tasks, what are you doing in here so I’m thinking bedrooms dark not a bad thing because you can sleep in dark spaces. But you know a space that you do a lot of work in maybe not a great idea.

And you’re right, it does look darker from a little chip to a wall and then you get it everywhere it tends to look quite a bit deeper and a lot more intense so sometimes going a little bit lighter than you think you want is a good idea inside.

Paul: I see and a popular trend that I found has come into play here in the last year or so is adding like wallpaper as an elegant rich, I’ve seen a lot of powder rooms in new constructions because it doesn’t have a shower or bath it’s a small little place. What I’ve noticed a lot of lately is like the bottom wainscoting is white, is really really bright. Matches the toilet, sink, the pedestal sink.

But then what they use on the top half of the walls is is like a either nice elegant wallpaper or a dark color. So bringing that into your bedroom could you use like a wallpaper feature wall or would you recommend even using like a darker color to create the elegant look as a feature wall in a bedroom? Would that be possible? Or is that kind of faux pas and don’t do that?

Carla: You certainly can, you certainly can. When adding wallpaper, depending on the wallpaper, you’re also adding pattern and texture in there so that adds interest to a space. And you know the more sort of you know neutral or intense colors sometimes will evoke the same idea. You know you can have a little bit of gloss on it, and you can have gloss and matte or shine and that sometimes even with a soft color palette can make it look more elegant depending on the paper.

Paul: Cool that’s good to know well we’ll have to do a completely different show about wallpaper.

Carla: Yeah wallpaper’s another story for sure.

Paul: Yeah and it’s a popular thing. It’s funny five years ago most of my jobs were ripping wallpaper off or painting over wallpaper and it’s funny how trends just do a complete 180 and now everybody wants wallpaper right? So we’ll do another show about that! 

But I’ve got a few questions that I think maybe some other viewers may have with respect to these five factors found in the free pdf that you can download from trustedhousepainter.com. And the pdf is called “Best paint colors for your bedroom walls”. How to create a beautiful feel an elegant feel or a calming feel or whatever you want. These five elements help you identify which feel you want for your room. So one of the first questions I have is, can you combine two or more of these one of these five factors down in the pdf? Can you combine two of them together or is that not recommended? So in other words can you incorporate soft and warm, and rich and elegant or is that gonna create too much noise in the room?

Carla: Great question Paul! Actually, yes you can combine the two, but I will put something out here if you feel uncertain. Don’t don’t mix them if you feel nervous. Just stick with one, but you’re right you could definitely mix, say that soft and warm and rich and elegant. You could do a soft beige on most of your walls and then add an accent wall. That’s something a little bit richer and more elegant.

Paul: Awesome ,cool that’s that that basically solves my question because a lot of quite a lot of clients that I’ve had in the past asked that very question and I kind of get fumbled and I don’t really want to tell them what to do because if I tell them yes and they do it wrong, and they have a horrible experience – well guess who wears it right? Me, because I recommended that! So thank you for answering that. The second question I have is, if someone isn’t sure what type of feel they want in the room, whether it be soft and airy or soft and warm light and airy, bright and cheerful, quiet and calm, rich and elegant. If they don’t know what type of feel they want for the home what would you recommend as a default go-to recommendation of one of those five factors?

Carla: I would actually say… I would either say light and airy or soft and warm. So really, it comes down to what colors you like you know because everybody has what they like. So don’t ignore what you like. So if you tend to like warmer colors, creams and beiges and sands maybe just go into that direction.

Or if you tend to like cooler colors, you like grays and blues and things like that then go to the light and airy. Keep it light and calming and that will be the easiest way for most people to  have a nice space for their bedroom.

Paul: Okay excellent thank you. Another question I had was like I mentioned earlier, we’re in the pacific northwest, it’s gray six months of the year here. Beautiful, I love the rain! It’s fresh, it’s awesome, but what if you’re down south south of the border, and you get a lot of sunlight. So my question to you is, what if your bedroom is on the north side of a home and it doesn’t get a lot of light? What happens if your bedroom doesn’t have a lot of window light natural light coming in and it’s very dark and cave-like?  What do you think would be the best feel for that type of room, to help offset the constant darkness of it?

Carla: Okay well I like to think of two schools of thoughts when it comes to that. One is either embrace it and just know that it’s dark and maybe that’s what you do use let’s like let’s go a little bit deeper. Let’s maybe go to the bright and cheerful or the rich and elegant because it’s already dark anyways. You’re not going to be able to fix the lighting with your paint, right? So that would be one way to go about it, and just accept that it’s dark and go for it.

Or the other direction would be is if it’s dark in you know north facing and out here say in the pacific northwest something that has a little bit more clarity behind it, something that’s a little cleaner because the light is a little bit more muted. SO you could go for warm creamy things if you want to do the whites, like something like Benjamin Moore’s Navajo white actually works really good in north facing spaces. They don’t look too dull but they still have a little bit of color and it looks brighter. I do find that if you go bright white in spaces like that they actually look a little too sterile, so you need to add a little bit of color in order for it to look a little bit more inviting.

Paul: Yeah, and then the other pdf that you made, “How to choose the perfect paint color for your home” you mentioned that there’s certain things that you’re stuck with, that you choose your color based on the things you’re stuck with. So what you just said there, by kind of embracing what exists sometimes helps alleviate that question.

Carla: Exactly.

Paul: Cool, and the last question I have is kind of like the option, it might kind of sound like a stupid question but I kind of ask stupid questions and sometimes I amaze myself with the answers that come out…. but what happens if your bedroom is always cold?  What happens if you’re home, you live in an older home and it’s cold and you’re always bundling up. You know, would using dark colors help create warmth, and vice versa?  If you lived in a very hot home would putting light colors on your bedroom walls help cool the feel of the room?

Carla: Yes, actually Paul you’ve got it right on the money! It doesn’t technically change the temperature of your room but it will actually make it feel or appear warmer. If you do warmer colors, deeper denser colors in those cool spaces and conversely it will cool off the space. So sometimes if you are on a hot side of the house say you’re south facing or west facing, or say you live in the south and it’s got a lot of light if you want to soften the heat a little bit, cool it off a little bit – go to the cooler side.

And conversely if you wanted to warm it up, instead of putting a sweater maybe put a deeper warmer color on your walls and that’ll help too.

Paul: Awesome, that’s great I really appreciate you taking the time to make this video with me talking about your free pdf and the factors that you outline in it that help homeowners choose the perfect paint color for the bedroom walls. The pdf itself has some color swabs on each factor such as soft and warm, light and airy, bright cheerful, calm and quiet, and rich and elegant. So if you download this pdf you’ll see some color swabs on each point that help you understand and visually see which colors Carla is mentioning. And Carla, most of these colors are Benjamin Moore colors that you have put in the the pdf is that correct?

Carla: That is correct, in fact they all are Benjamin colors and it’s not limited to Benjamin Moore. It could be any paint color out there. You know, almost every paint well every paint store and p paint retailer out there has their own variety of colors and you can get similar colors to almost every retail. And I would say a big thing, don’t ignore the tried and true kind of colors, you know you can always ask the people at the paint store which ones are people using a lot right now because you know you’re not looking to reinvent the wheel. Let’s just work with what’s working.

Paul: Awesome, so to finish up this, if you’re watching the show you can go to trustedhousepainter.com and you can download your free pdf entitled “Bedrooms: best paint colors for your bedroom walls” And if someone wants to contact you Carla, for say a virtual color consult for their bedroom, that seems to be the popular thing nowadays for a lot of people, where can they contact you and how can they how can they get a hold of you for your services?

Carla: you can contact me at Caral@trustedhousepainter.com or you can go through the trustedhousepainter.com website and you can find me through there.

Paul: And if you’re looking for painters to go along with that newly colored room we can also talk because we can get you in touch with some of the painters with Trusted House Painter in your local area. Excellent thank you very much Carla, I was just going to say Trusted House Painter is a brand new app that’s out there helping homeowners find and connect with local painters within three clicks. It’s the latest thing, it’s super easy and if you need a paint job – whether it be your exterior, whether you’re planning for the spring,  whether you have a renovation, whether you have a basement suite that you need blitzed out because you’ve got tenants in and out, a commercial property, a retail property. Anything you want you can go to TrustedHousePainter.com and find professional painters like that. So thank you very much for being on the show Carla and thank you for watching the show and any last comments that you have?

Carla: The last tip I would say is you know trust your gut. You know, sometimes that’s the biggest thing – go with what you like. That’s important too. You’re the one who lives there, you’re the one paying the bills so make sure it feels like your house. So don’t don’t feel like you have to be like your friends or your neighbours. Do your space for you and take advantage of all the references and materials out there for you. They’re there to help.

Paul: Yeah, exactly and at Trusted House Painter we want you to have a beautiful rest in your bedroom so you can paint the world a better place. Thanks again for being on the show Carla, and thank you for watching and we’ll chat soon Carla.