Colour Dilemma

I think choosing a colour for our front room was harder than deciding to buy the house in the first place. We had a couple 'obstacles' to work around before we came up with our colour combination. First there was our red IKEA Billy bookshelves...

{subtle they ain't}

They were purchased on a whim a couple years ago without thought to future decorating choices. I read a couple tutorials about how to paint IKEA furniture but it looked like a big hassle without a guaranteed result. The red had to stay.

Secondly we had a 7ft long brown leather couch that is probably the comfiest couch out there but we scored it secondhand off Craigslist about a year ago and our kitty's claws made quick work of poking holes in it. It's definitely seen better days but Hubs absolutely refuses to let it go.

If you're keeping track that means I have to work with cherry red and brown. Awesome right? Awesome not. We started with neutrals; grays, tans and browns. Then moved on to soft colours like pale green and blue - but nothing came even remotely close to the clean and fresh look that I wanted. After multiple trips to the paintstore and many testers later (like 12 different testers) our front room looked like this...

...on all 4 walls. And then it stayed that way for weeks while I scoured the internets for what my subconscious wanted but my brain didn't know how to produce.

Then I found this picture...

...and everything fell into place.

{stay tuned!}