If you were the body of…

If you were the body of our Victorian house (knowing that we love jewel tones and richness, are tired of pastels and earth tones, but are also a little worried about ending up 'too' dark or 'too' bright), would you dress in the Benjamin Moore paint:

a) athens blue:

b) chicago blues:

c) blueberry:

Please imagine all those screen colors a few shades darker and more richly blue than they look on screen. At least if the color cards are accurate.

We've done a preliminary narrowing down to those three. The blue will be accented with a fair bit of a purple contrast color, and trim in dark red, with a tiny bit of white.

22 thoughts on “If you were the body of…”

  1. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Oh, and Mirna, it may not surprise you to learn that Blueberry is from the more ‘modern’ set of colors, and the other two are from the ‘classic’ set. 🙂

  2. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Ah, David, you are no use to me. I like blue, blue, blue, and the richer and deeper the better. I once painted a bathroom cobalt blue.

  3. Blueberry, followed by Athens, taking into consideration your trim colors. I dislike Chicago Blues for a house color, especially in the midwest. How would you ever find it in the middle of winter?! 😀

  4. Depends mostly on what exactly the trim colors are, but I’m going to say Athens – I love the blueberry, but with those trims I think it would look circus-like, instead of making the trim colors really pop.

    My mom’s way of picking paint colors is to get the little sample cans, paint a few square feet of scrap board, then put them in the place they’re going to go, so you get to see them in the light and surrounding areas, plus a sense of what a bigger expanse looks like. Might be worth a shot.

  5. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Oh, that’s definitely the plan. Pam is recommending that we actually put some paint on each side of the house, including both below and above the porch. But the sample cans are $7 each, and I’m trying to get it down to two colors to test, initially at least.

    We may end up disliking both once they’re up on the house, of course, and have to come back and try this again with new colors. And Kevin’s worried that even if we like a swatch in a rich blue, that when we do an entire house, it’ll end up overwhelming. But hopefully not.

  6. I like all these colours, but I want to stand up for Chicago Blues, since no-one else has. 🙂 I’ve always had a soft spot for blues with a hint of grey…

  7. Tanima Majumdar

    My extinct for an exterior paint colour would be the Chicago blue, because I love grayish blues, and greys hide the natural dirt that will collect on the exterior.

    But once you mentioned purple trim, it has to be blueberry! That deep jewel tone will go beautifully with purple! I have a sari with that colour combo, and it’s one of my favourites!

  8. Julia Kholodenko

    My personal favorite color is blueberry, but I would only recommend that if you were doing neutral trim colors, such as taupe or cream. Since you have red and purple in your trim, I think you are best off w/ Chicago blue, since it seems lik a neutral base grey-blue that will make your trim pop and not compete with it. Living in New England with a sea of Athens Blue colonials, I can assure you that color is totally wrong if you are aiming for traditional Victorian.

  9. I dislike Chicago Blues but the others are fine. Your trim colors sound dark from your description, though, so maybe think of something lighter to make details pop out. Chartreuse keeps coming to mind, even though I know it is not one of your favorites…

    I’m not sure about dark red with any of these colors, unless you’re thinking more towards the burgandy spectrum as opposed to maroon.

  10. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Julia, I think I’m either going to go for a balanced rich look, or a slightly more subdued version. But not sure which yet — depends somewhat on what Kevin prefers, of course. I don’t know that I really want any one color to pop much.

    I’m curious about the Athens Blue colonials — that’s really popular? It seems like such a rich color for a colonial. It’s certainly richer than any of the BM historic colors.

    We’re not trying to go super-traditional Victorian — some of their color combos make my eyes hurt. Something more subtly blended, I think, than what they would have done.

    Kirsten, the trim colors might be dark, but might also be light — one option for the purple is a lavender, which we might use if we end up with a darker shade of blue. We’ve found a couple dark reds that do look really good with the purple and blue (to my eyes, anyway), based on the color cards, at least.

  11. Well, ignoring the monitor issues that Scmuel already mentioned, I (personally) like Athens, but that’s because I’m biased to lighter colours always. And, also as usual, once I actually paint on a swatch I pick the darker colour, so realistically I say Chicago Blues.

    There is some other colour tone in the Blueberry that I’m not a fan of….it seems more teal, but with a hint of something I can’t place. Anyhow, if you like that undertone, then obviously go with it =)

    I think all of those blues could go with your accent colours in the end. Good luck!

  12. Chicago! But you won’t really know until you did your test. Believe it or not, I just tested EIGHT shades of beige looking for the perfect cafe-au-lait color for our guest room. Yes, beige (it’s a tiny room with white trim & we want to be as neutral as possible). All of the color cards looked pretty similar, but on the wall the differences were drastic. Several were much closer to ocher/yellow, others too brown, one too pink…it was amazing.

  13. I misunderstood. I thought you were planning to use these for painting indoors. For outdoors, I still prefer browns and yellows for outdoors, but the blueberry is beautiful. On my monitor, I cannot distinguish the athens and the chicago at all.

  14. Blueberry, then chicago blues…since you are talking about the exterior, you want to think about how the color will fade with time, I think the blueberry will do well.

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