If you’ve seen any of my cooking videos or photos of my house on Instagram, you’ll see that I sometimes have a lot of paint swatches up on the walls. Why? Well, at my new house, where there aren’t any hallways and every room opens into the next, you can see most of the house from just about anywhere you are sitting. From where I am sitting writing this, at my sunny dining room table, I can see the kitchen, family room, living room, and office. From different spots in the living room, I can see all of that plus the stairway to the second floor.

It’s made it complicated to figure out the paint, wallpaper, and fabric scheme. I like so many colors, but you have to be disciplined in a situation like this. I went in big with my bright orange couches in the living room and family room. But I have stuff from other houses that I still like and want to use, so it is important to get the balance right.

I have a theory that the ubiquitous gray walls of the past decade coincided with the trend toward open floor plans. It certainly makes things easier, when you can see everything, if everything is gray and white. But is that fun? No, it’s not fun. It’s serene, but it’s not fun. So do we want fun or serene? Well, that’s a personal choice.

One easy way to make sure your paint choices are on the same page is to put together all of your color swatches on the same page. For client projects, to make sure everything works together, I pull the paint images from google, then paste into an InDesign file. There should be accent color, but it should also have a similar overall feel. Here are a few examples of that. Note that a lot of times, the one that looks like an outlier might be a kid’s room or a powder room.

Do you see how they work together?

I happen to derive a great deal of joy from my big color choices, but you can’t make your house like a dollhouse. It does have to make sense together. You’ll get keyhole views through your doorways, even if your house isn’t set up like mine, so it’s good to have a theme of sorts.

More on that in our next post, Flow, Part 2: Keyhole Views