Committing to a paint color...

...was not as difficult as I feared it would be.  My husband and I were looking forward to Valentine's Day weekend, because we decided to make some home improvements.  We agreed on a huge undertaking:  priming & painting our great room.  Now, unless you've seen this room, you are probably rolling your eyes and convinced I'm just being dramatic.  This room is a 600 ft² addition with a natural rock wall, pitched ceilings, and several exposed wood beams (read: a sh!t ton of trim work).  We agreed on priming the walls first, because it is possible that this room was last painted somewhere in the 70's.  Also, we considered painting the room white (Benjamin Moore's 'White Dove' to be exact) and thought we would get a good idea of what white walls would look like once they were primered with KILZ white.  No go.  It looked too VFW hall...

So, color!  We looked at an oil on canvas painting we love (that I picked up at a yard sale for $2 last year--that's how I roll) for inspiration, then consulted my beloved color fan deck my dad snagged for me from his job.

Round 1:  Dunn-Edwards "Sweet Garden" in flat.  Honey made his first (of several) trips to The Home Depot for a sample container, then returned to paint a swatch next to the wood beams.  After it dried, it looked like a color that would only sanely belong in a teenager's room.  It was quickly covered with primer.

Round 2:  'We need something with more green; more serene but not a yawn, and definitely not sage green; nothing too dentist's office...'  Looking around the room for an example, our eyes rested (read: ogled) on the obvious choice... :::drumroll:::  my Domino Book of Decorating!  We have both always loved the cover of my bible, so it only made too much sense to paint the room the beautiful and perfect green-blue of the de Gournay wallpaper that wraps the book. 

Round 3:  I grabbed a Behr color inspiration brochure I snagged over a year ago from HD.  Inside I found what looked to be the exact color of the book:  "Indian Ocean."  Honey headed back to HD, got a sample made, but (thanks to his trained eye and sometimes-awesome memory) thought the paint looked a bit too dark to match the book cover perfectly, so he had a sample made of another color he saw on a swatch card at the store.  We painted areas near one another on the wall that the natural daylight was still hitting, and also near the rock wall and wood beams to see how they responded to the colors.  I was too impatient to sit through the drying time, so I plugged in my hair dryer and sped up the process.

Round 4:  SCORE!  Since I am generous, I will share with you the exact color match to the Domino book.  For Behr, it is called "Garden View," or "470D-4."  We tried, we loved, we bought two gallons of premium plus ultra flat and covered the walls in its perfection.  Of course, that meant sending honey back to HD to purchase the two gallons, but he never complained. 

We chose a flat/matte finish to help hide the imperfections on our oddly-textured walls.  It works!  And the light bounces off beautifully, which in a room that doesn't receive a flood of natural light, is a big plus.  Sorry to tease, but I don't currently have any photos of the room to post-- 50% because I didn't bring my camera to upload the photos off of, and 50% because it isn't decorated.  Check back soon and I will share some work-in-progress evidence--some of which is still annoyingly stuck to my skin.  Yes, I showered.