Here is a little word to the wise:
Let’s just say you move into a new (to you) house and you love it except that the paint colors are all wrong (and half the major appliances old and about to stop working but let’s skip that part for now).
Now let’s imagine that you can’t wait to start repainting so you indulge in a little DIY. If you do this, DO NOT, whatever you do, decide to paint the dining room a bright, cheery yellow. Especially don’t do this if the dining room is open to every other room in the house.
Because if you do, when the time comes to repaint the rest of your open plan house, you will find that you have to match EVERY OTHER PAINT COLOR downstairs to BRIGHT YELLOW.
I promise, you will. And puh-please do not try and tell me that yellow matches everything, because it doesn’t. At least, it might do if you have a modern house, where anything you slap up on the walls will look highly funky and probably end up (sob sob) in the pages of Dwell. But those of us with mock-georgian piles complete with crown moldings and details everywhere have to pay a little more attention, especially if we chose the house partially for those details in the first place.
Next, when your husband, who you love very much, tells you he wants ALL BRIGHT COLORS, do not spend two precious days trying to oblige him. You will - I repeat - WILL find yourself rocking and babbling over the fan deck while holding great fistfuls of your own hair.
(Just believe me when I say that our chosen bright colors put next to each other make the whole house look like a nursery. Which, in effect, it is, but let us pretend a little, OK?)
Another thing: do NOT, under any circumstances, hold a last minute group consultation with your friends who all live in beautifully curated houses that look like they stole them out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Unless, of course, you are willing to paint over your bright yellow, forgo your bright green, and settle for living in a Pottery Barn Catalog.
A look, which, by the way, I LOVE. It’s just not us.
Another NOT GOOD IDEA: In a fit of pique caused by said friends agreeing that there is no solution but to paint your double-height entrance way CREAM (the color of a decades worth of rental houses - a color you swore you would never grace your walls again), you should not waste an afternoon trying to find exactly the right shade of GRAY. Because at this point your significant other will arrive home, shrug and say “you mean all gray like the inside of a dungeon?”. And you will suddenly realize that he is right.
Oh, and another word to the wise : do all this color research BEFORE you call in the painters and agree on a starting date IN FOUR DAYS TIME.
I am sure nobody noticed that I was away. But that is where I have been. Oh, and my final color scheme?





Some bright colors. And CREAM.
Job done. The painters arrive tomorrow. I am off to pack for the asylum.