Being in a room with off-white walls made me realize two things. One that off--white is very dingy. And two, white on utilitarian surfaces is just a bad idea in general.

Even before Operation Vintage Makeover had become solid in my mind, I wanted to paint my bedroom. The color purple has stuck with me since I first thought of this idea back in high school. At that time, replacing the carpet was not in reach, so I had to find a color that would suit the peach carpet. I know I had grabbed a few paint chips, but there was a fear that the colors would have been discontinued - so I decided pick up some new paint chips.

If you recall from my very first post about Operation Vintage Makeover, you will know that I had a lot of purples to choose from. If it wasn't obvious from the pictures, I literally grabbed every single paint chip that had a purple sounding name to them.

Once I got them home, I laid them out on my horrible peach carpet and looked them over. Right away, I eliminated almost all of the dark purples and the more bluish ones.

All of the colors which I eliminated.

The reason why I eliminated the darker purples is because I didn't want to make the room seem small. Even though my bedroom is actually pretty big, I don't want to lose any "space" that the eye may miss because of paint color.

And the reason that I eliminated the bluish purples is because my house has 5 shades of blue in it already. Not that I dislike blue - Caribbean blue is among my favorite colors. I wanted more of a definitive color that stood out more.

Before I go much further, I should explain the chips on the bottom. Originally, before I knew that I was getting a set of furniture from my grandparents, I was going to paint the trim color a cream color to match the bedroom set that I currently had. In a similar manner to the purples, I had picked up a slew of creams to see what matched. All of those cream colors on the bottom didn't match my set very well.

It turns out that I picked up those cream chips in vain, because I'm not matching the cream trim after all, but going with a white trim instead.

Anyway, moving on!!

As noted by the picture below, I stuck to the lighter end of the purple scale, and choosing more bold, reddish purples. Frankly, I think they are much prettier and more feminine.

All the purples that I considered at first

From October 2017 to January 2019, it remained like this. The reason was that I had to clean out my room before I even thought about paint again. And if you saw my previous OVM post about my cleaning process, you will understand why it took so long to clean out my room, LOL.

So fast forward now to mid-January 2019. My room had now been *mostly* cleaned out (there still was some random loose stuff that needed a home, but isn't that true always??). And so, since the money for the carpet had been set aside and the room was almost ready, I thought it was time to bring out my paint choices.

So I got all of those paint chips in the above picture and spread them out on the living room floor. With the help of my mother, we eliminated a few more of the darker shades and came up with two sets of 8.

My set is on top, while my mother's is on the bottom

As you can see, my mother stuck to more of the lighter side, while I stuck to more of a medium, bolder color palette. Frankly, I was afraid that if I stuck to a lighter shade that it wouldn't look very purple. And since I was coming off of off-white walls, I much preferred an actual color and not a tint.

However, there was one color that both of us had in our top 8. For reference, it is the first one in my set and the fourth one in my mother's lineup.

It's a Valspar shade called Sassy Lilac.

Since Pinterest was being a brat (glares), we do a screenshot instead.

Oddly enough, I had an old paint chip of this shade from when I was considering painting the room several year ago. I believe that it was Providence that I chose this color again as my first choice.

So in Februrary, I went to Lowes to pick up a sample or two. And what do you know? Sassy Lilac was one of the few shades that I could snap up from the shelf. (Providence, I swear.)

So I bought it as well as some tubs for all of the other loose junk and headed home to start the prep for my room - which will be featured soon!

Your turn with the mic! If you had a dream color for your room, what would it be? What is your favorite color? Do you like painting? Tell me in the comments!


Old-fashionably yours,

Catherine