These are all colors we…

These are all colors we like. Top to bottom, left to right:

Incarnadine, radicchio, rectory red.
Hague blue, brinjal, pelt, buckland blue.
Drawing room blue, pitch blue, minster green, orangery.

Buckland Blue is our actual kitchen cabinet color, finalized, by Benjamin Moore. It looks much brighter here than in person, I think because of the sunlight and the angle of the shot. Sorry! Look at the top right corner of that color for a vaguely close to real representation.

The rest are Farrow & Ball colors -- they look so soft and luscious in person, with an almost velvety texture. Clay! I wish our cabinetmakers could use F&B -- they're willing to match color, but not use the actual paint. Oh well. At least we still think the Buckland Blue will work well with the F&B colors.

So far, I've been surprised by how gorgeous Hague Blue is in person -- I had no idea. It would be perfect for a gentleman's study or a library -- very moody and smoky, a dark blue with undertones of grey and green. Like a stormy sea. I don't think we're likely to use it, except perhaps as an accent somewhere. But someone should! It's an insanely rich, sophisticated color.

I also really love Drawing Room Blue -- a very clean, pure blue. And Orangery is just delightful and sunny -- if we had actually built that conservatory, we really would have had to use orangery in there. As it is, it might go in Kavi's room, or in the mudroom, if we paint that a separate color from the kitchen.

The rest is still up for grabs -- especially cause F&B will be coming out with 11 new colors in January! :-) We're going to have to wait 'til then to finalize our decisions. And somehow I didn't bring home a sample of Chinese Blue, and I definitely want to add that to this set, since I know I like it.

Hmm...now that I'm staring at them, I really like the Hague Blue / Brinjal combination. Kevin likes Brinjal better than Pelt -- he thinks Pelt is a little grape-like. Do you agree? (Why are eggplants (brinjal means eggplant) good, but grapes bad?) I'd be tempted to do Hague for the family room, Brinjal for the dining room, and then...what for the front parlor / music room? Maybe back to the Chinese Blue as originally planned? Would two different blues in the same sequence be weird? I want something brighter in that front room, since the porch means it's more shaded than the other rooms.

Here's a Miles Redd room in Hague Blue -- note, he lacquered it, so it's all shiny. We wouldn't do that.

And Kev doesn't like crisp white with blue, but I need to ask him what he thinks of off-whites, oatmeals, etc. Because I think this is lovely:

What do you think of these colors? Do any of them seem perfect to you for a front parlor, dining room, or family room? Any suggestions for sequences?

4 thoughts on “These are all colors we…”

  1. A few things.
    1. I’m not sure if you put all the colours next to each other just for the photo or if you’re looking at them like that irl, but if that’s the way you are considering them I’d just suggest spacing them out a little or a lot more. Or even only putting up one or two at a time and eliminating them that way slowly. Because your perception of them is definitely somewhat influenced by what other colour is directly around them. If that makes sense.

    2. I’m not sure (can’t recall) if you’re keeping all woodwork the same or thinking about painting some out or sanding and restaining some of them, but I find that I will usually (mildly) compromise on colour in order to have it flow with the surrounding woodwork.

    3. Based on the door’s woodstain I find myself leaning towards drawing room blue or pitch blue, but I’m not sure given the competing ‘voices’ of the other colour to be honest.

    4. Good luck!!!

  2. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    They’re up at our rental house, not our real house, which is sort of disastrous right now. We’ll move the finalists over there before deciding, though. 🙂

    The wood trim will be wood, not painted, but we haven’t figured out stain options yet. I think medium-to-dark stain, and not too yellow/orange. Probably.

    And yes, I do think we need to space them out some as we narrow it down. But we have limited space right now. Ideally, we’d have one color up, then some wood, then the other color, I think. Not sure we can do that here, oh well…

  3. Ah, up at the rental house AND you are looking at restaining your wood. Well then I’m going to be of no help as I wouldn’t paint unless I saw the colour blocks on the actual walls. As even though light in one house is the same light in another house the dimensions of the room and floor and all that jazz add other factors.

    I’m a huge advocate of not painting until you’re actually in the place, which I realize is definitely complex when you’re doing other things (buying furniture, etc.), but I’m odd like that. I’d also probably see if I could get the same price from the painters at doing one room at a time, so I could live and decide with one colour before moving on, b/c I’m ocd like that.

    If I was forced into it (and going by the way the colours seem on my screen), I might do Radicchio in the front parlor, pitch blue in the dining room and brinjal in the family room. That is if front parlor = smaller entry way/mud room area. If it’s a more sitting in room space, then I’d maybe go with pelt instead.

    I see from your other post that you are leaning towards that colour combo anyhow. =)

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