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Guest Room Makeover Post 1

In conjunction with BlogHer and Sherwin-Williams, I was given the opportunity to repaint/make over a room. For those who know me, you’ll know that decorating doesn’t come easy. I’m perfectly happy with things the way they are, even knowing the rooms all need a makeover. When we bought this house, every room needed painting. One and one-half years later, one room has been painted. But soon, a second room will be painted. For this project, we chose the third bedroom/guest room.

Bedroom Before

The color of the walls is somewhere between green and yellow. When the sun shines into the room in the mornings, it’s more yellow. As the day goes on, the walls turn an icky shade of green. Vince doesn’t mind taping and painting, and I don’t mind playing with Sherwin-Williams’ color selection tools and coming up with ideas. I had no preconceived ideas as to what color I would use in the room. For several weeks, every photo I saw was scrutinized as possible inspiration for my room. Flowery/girly colors just don’t go with the Texas dust, rocks, cactus, chickens and cows on this little ranch. The first idea that came to me as far as an inspiration photo, just a launching point, was the socks I recently knitted that screamed “southwest” to me.

Into the Whirled Socks

The tan/gold/rust colors were a bit deeper and a bit brighter than I wanted in the room, but it did give me the idea to go with a southwestern colors in the room. Using Sherwin-Williams ColorSnap Studio™ for iPad®, I took a photo of the socks and brought it into ColorSnap. Simply by tapping on any area of the sock, a coordinating paint color appeared in my palette.

Socks for Color Inspiration

There’s a cute little shop in a town near me so I visited there, with socks and iPad in hand, and explained to the lady that all I knew for sure was that I wanted tans, turquoise and brown . . not necessarily a real southwest theme and definitely not as bright as the socks, but something similar to those colors. The store was full of those colors. The first piece I picked up was this pillow:

Pillow

That is exactly the colors I wanted to use in the room. Right there in the shop, I took a photo of the pillow, and again plugged it into ColorSnap Studio for iPad.

Pillow for Color Inspiration

If you click on the two palette pictures, you’ll notice that Ligonier Tan appears on both. Right away, I knew that was the color I had in mind and that’s the color I chose for the walls. ColorSnap Studio for iPad is an amazing tool! It also allows you to virtually “repaint” the room to see how it’s going to look. I was leaning towards Mesa Tan, but Vince thought it was too dark and he agreed that Ligonier Tan was perfect.

“Painted” Room

Sherwin-Williams ColorSnap Studio for iPad made my job of choosing a paint color quite simple! It truly is color at your fingertips! If you haven’t tried it, even if you aren’t painting a room, ColorSnap Studio for iPad makes it so simple to choose colors from a photo! Simply open the app, select an image from either your Camera Roll or Photo Stream, and the on-screen directions will guide you through choosing the perfect colors of paint to match the colors in the photo you love. The new ColorSnap Studio for iPad app offers all the ease-of-use of a tablet, as well as pinch, zoom and swipe features to interact with images of your own room, or one in the app. Explore over 1,500 colors, get color inspiration from a photo or virtually paint your wall with a swipe of your finger. All for free!

How do you find color inspiration for your home projects? Tell us in the comments below, and you just might win a $100 Sherwin-Williams gift card from BlogHer!

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

  1. Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
  2. Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
  3. Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
  4. For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 5/1/2013-5/19/2013.

Be sure to visit the Sherwin-Williams brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I once borrowed the shirt off of my girlfriend’s back to color match because it was the perfect shade of sage green. This color now graces our master bedroom walls.

  2. I usually make sure the walls don’t clash with the furniture, or the quilts!

  3. I love to decorate, but I tend to keep my paint scheme neutral. I find it is easier to blend furniture, accessories and my quilts with tan, beige, and shades of white.

  4. We are painting our kitchen this summer. I just used this tool to pick the color. Wow! That really was easy. Usually I just go look at the color cards and pick what doesn’t look too ugly. I am not a decorator by any stretch of the imagination.

  5. It just depends on what kind of mood I’m in, sometimes it is fabric in a store, maybe a quilt or accent piece I want in that room, or sometimes something I saw on the internet.

  6. I recently visited my nephew’s new home and love a color they choose. It is a Sherwin Williams paint! However we are having a hard time finding a match for it. Hope to paint this summer. Maybe this tool will help.

  7. I love color – but for walls and ceilings I usually go sort of pale – sort of because sometimes the actuality is BRIGHTER, and darker than the color chip.
    I also go for “airiness” – mostly because I do NOT like feeling closed in! Which to me usually (not always) spells a white ceiling, white woodwork. The walls themselves I want to portray a “feeling”. Currently I have a “just right” shade of pale blue in my kitchen and the bathroom (which is TINY and just off the kitchen) – same for the laundry room. The kitchen is also the warmest room in the house – hot in the summer and in winter! So something on the “cool” palette was what I wanted – nothing intense – but airy.
    My living room and study are still WIPs – not even at the started stage – but hopefully that will happen this year. And I may depart from my usual – at least as far as the living room (used to be dining room) – and go with the richness of a deep royal red – at least in accent (curtains), against sandy beach color walls – maybe. Still playing with that!
    My sewing room is pale green – lots of white accent to make it feel larger and airy. My room is pink – a bit more than too bright – but it was the palest I found on the color chart! Fortunately it seems to fade or “pale out” over time! Always wanted a pink bedroom. Used to have a pink family room – with LOTS of navy and mauve accents and green plants – did NOT look feminine at all! Was just open and friendly!

  8. I look at other people’s homes that have recently (past two years) been painted. I ask what color / brand of paint they use if I like the colors. I will then go to the paint store and get chips, not only of the color but of those one or two shades lighter, as the house is built to not allow sun inside. Then I look at the paint chips in different areas of the room at different times of the day, noting what I think I see. Then I choose.

  9. My husband uses the on-line color tool but I like to get the paint chips and tape them to the wall for a couple days. I think the change in daylight makes a substantial difference that the on-line tool can’t duplicate. If the chips don’t look good I toss them, if there is one I like I get a sample size of the color and paint a larger block and live with it again for a couple days. I am not a fan of painting but it makes such an impact! I love Sherwin-Williams because they can match ANYTHING!!

  10. I had such a hard time picking the color for my kitchen. This tool would have made it easier. The color I ended up purchasing is not the color I want, so I have not finished the small amount of painting I need to do on the door and windows.

  11. I love playing with the color matches upon my iPad and finding colors for art projects. My daughter is an interior designer and she uses the app in her business too.

  12. I like the colors to flow from one room to the next, so I usually have an idea of what color I want. I can’t wait to try this tool as I am decorating our guest room around a monarch butterfly photo, and the quilt on the bed is going to made from hand-dyed fabric matched to the photo by Vicki Welsh! This will make finding my wall color easy.

  13. I like to use pictures from magazines or an example in a model home.

  14. Galen keeps saying we will be doing some remodeling this year. We have wallpaper which needs to go. Our painted walls are all the usual light “beige”. I will stay light but want something different that will not clash with our furniture, paintings and such. Usually go the paint chip route, but the last time we did this there was none of this technology available! It will be a total downstairs project or 2 between paint, flooring, you name it!

  15. I usually don’t have a problem selecting color for a room the exception was my great room. We lived with trial swatches of paint for 6 months before deciding. Love the color we ended up with even after several years. Now we are going to do the master suite but think we have a color that matches an area rug and curtains picked. May go a shade or 2 lighter than the swatch but like it so far.

  16. I find inspiration through DIY blogs and pinterest. One link leads to another and I have been online for hours!

  17. This house had all flat white walls when I moved in. While unpacking moving boxes I started thinking about possible wall colors. I had used fabric as padding in the boxes and when I came across a very colorful piece I knew right away it had the colors I wanted to use! The fabric is part of a collection designed by Diana Leone for Northcott Silk Inc. called “The Flowers of the Mainau.” I took the fabric with me to select paint colors and I still love my choices! I have a colorful house!

  18. I’m doing quite a bit of painting in our home. Like your home, every room needs repainting. I read another post this morning about the SW app. I have it on my Iphone, but not on my Ipad. Think I will play around with it for my son’s room. I like to get inspiration from outdoors especially flowers and bushes. Thanks for the review!

  19. I find color inspiration from nature. I like greens, blues and browns so I usually go for these types of shades.

  20. Love the socks! I also love Sherwin Williams paint! My first choice by far.

    • Whoops! Guess I need to tell where my inspiration comes from.I usually pick a color from one item in the room and then take it to SW and pick the paint chips I like and go from there! (Don’t know how to remove my previous commen on this tablet :/ ) Sherwin Williams paint is the best!

  21. I love nature and look at the flowers, birds, sky as my inspiration.

  22. For my bedroom, I brought home several swatches of light blues to match my faded jeans shirt. Even though I thought I had it matched, it was much brighter after the room was painted. So now I’m looking at a soft yellowy ivory to match the drapes. Surely, that wouldn’t be too bright!!

  25. I take some of my inspiration from magazines but most of it comes from current fabric lines!

  26. I chose one color in my home from a picture of someone else’s home and loved the color. The main color is a neutral that a decorator suggested. I am not any good at decorating.

  28. I usually find inspiration by looking at home decorating magazines. Thanks so much.

  29. I get inspiration by looking outside or by watching shows on TV

  30. My color inspiration inevitably comes from quilting fabrics I love; for example, I’m getting ready to paint our guest bathroom a shade of aqua/turquoise that is the “base note” of a favorite batik.

  32. Mst of the time I use magazines for color suggestions. Then I bup a ‘tes’ size of te paint I think I want to use an paint a large squar on a wall in the room so I can see how the paint actually looks. Using the ColorSnap Studio sounds like a much better way to go about it though.

  35. I usually get inspired by my fabric stash. I also use Pinterest.

  36. I usually pick colors from the color cards at the paint store…so this summer we are painting the inside of our house and I’m going to use the colorsnap app…..thanks for the great info…

  37. I just remodeled my guest room. I searched for an inspiration for weeks and finally found it: one of the ubiquitous catalogues that overflow my mailbox (in this case, Macy’s) had a cover photo of a bedspread and pillows I immediately fell in love with! I ordered it online and picked up color swatches from our local hardware store that matched (and ended up purchasing my paint from Sherwin-Williams)–but the Color-Snap Studio would have been SOOOO much easier! Wish I’d known! Love this post, Judy!!

  39. I usually get inspiration from a color combination I see in someone’s clothes or accessories with the clothes. My secret desire though is to paint my room a warm brick red color and then use tan and white to brighten it up. My husband on the other hand does not want anything but plain ol’ white walls. I may just do it and then ask for forgiveness:-)

  40. I usually just go with neutrals but I have been wanting to paint my dining room a fun new color! Can’t wait to try tons of colors with this app!

  41. My inspiration for color in my home usually comes from flowers–with the caveat that the colors have to be so quietly joyful that they insist “this is your haven.” It’s worked in the last three homes I’ve had–and after 10 years in this one, I still love the colors. Since we live in the dusty desert, the rooms could stand some repainting, but I’m sure I would not make huge changes in the colors. (And, yes, the colors are somewhat idiosyncratic rather than eponymous.)

  42. I use pinterest and country home type mags to find inspiration. I like a lot of blues, greys, and whites at home.

  43. My most recent inspiration came from our yearly trips to the ocean. Beautiful sea foam paint for the walls, sand colored window treatments, and of course, a quilt with a combination of the two!

  44. I pull pages from magazines and file them in a “dream” folder and when we need color/design ideas, I pull out that folder.

  45. I use the internet to look at pictures of rooms to get ideas for paint schemes

  49. I love Sherwin Williams! When we were getting the house ready last year, that is all we used! Now I have to redo the bathroom and have been on the fence about color, I will have to try this color snap with towels I bought for the bathroom! Thanks for the tip

  56. I love surfing Pinterest to get ideas on designs I like. I have a hard time visualizing how a finished room will look. It helps me to actually see the colors in a home.

  57. I get color inspiration from the outdoor places that I love….forest, beach

  58. I usually find my inspiration from a piece of artwork that I want to hang in the room. Or if it’s my bedroom I find my inspiration in a comforter I love. And then I match the paint to that.

  59. I find inspiration in my favorite decor accessories.
    Thanks for the chance to win!

    wildorchid985 at gmail dot com

  60. tweet–https://twitter.com/WildOrchid985/status/333390002497138689

  63. We have an Eastlake Victorian so it’s easy to find color inspiration from other Victorian homes. Thanks for offering this.

    ky2here at msn dot com.

  65. Well, I’m a nut and I can find inspiration anywhere – menus, fabrics, postcards, blogs. I do like this Sherwin-Williams app though. I’m going to have fun noodling with that. I have to do our entire den over soon.

  67. I usually look at different design website to find color inspiration for my home projects.

    amy [at] utry [dot] it

  69. I look for timeless colors that flow well with the rest of the home… but with a great color pop for fun!

  73. Nature . You will see every color in nature and what other colors blend with particular colors.

  77. I love looking on Pinterest to find inspiration. Theres so many great projects out there!

  82. I love nature. Flowers, plants, animals, fruits, veggies, etc. The colors are so vibrant and are where all color comes from anyway. My kitchen is all about citrus fruits with lime green walls and white curtains with different citrus fruits printing on them. Love it!

  85. I am inspired by colors that I see in nature!
    susansmoaks at gmail dot com

  86. I often use my quilts as inspiration when I”m deciding on a new room color.

  88. I find color inspiration by browsing through pinterest and getting ideas from all those crafty people out there.

  90. I get color inspiration from projects I see online at home improvement websites and from colors in nature.

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