Painting the walls red
Finally got around to painting the foyer today. You can see the photos here. The red was Jason’s choice, but I like it too. It’s hard to get used to such strong colors, though. I think my art will look good with the red background. The paint is Devine Color Cayenne — it has a touch of brown in it but not too much. In the can it looks kind of salmony but dries a deep red — it’s not a color for the timid. Anyway, this is the second time we’ve used the Devine paints, and I strongly recommend them. They are really a joy to paint with. Thick and creamy, high-covering, and no paint stink.
Decorating the foyer will be tough. My electric piano will have to go there, but it really won’t look good. And we have nothing else to put there.
Woweee! That looks so COOL! It makes your woodwork look AMAZING!
Thank you! It’s amazing how the woodwork looked so dark against the old white walls, and now with color it just brightens right up. Some houses might look good in all white, but this is not one of those.
Strong colors are incredible. My brother is married to an interior decorator. Two office walls are deep blue, two are greyish blue. The dining room is taupe above the trim, and black below the trim. The trim is white. The kitchen is a deep red, like yours with less brown. There is black lattice on the ceiling, with fake grapes hanging from the lattice. It feels very Italian (appropriate, since my family is Italian, and my sister in law loves the ethnicity!)
The basement is a story in itself — it is painted three different colors! Three different gem tones, one a brown/tan/orange (closer to tan), one a purple/pink gem tone, the other ruby. And it looks positively wonderful. Certain walls are painted a certain color, and then there are small square blocks tastefully painted, very Mark Rothko-esque.
Be bold! Paint your whole home in color! You can always repaint 🙂 Bravo to you for starting it out.
The room I am in now has pale melon walls with dark melon trim. So it’s not as bright as the living room/foyer but it is colorful, at least. And the bathroom is yellow. 🙂
The next step is the dining room, which has wallpaper… we might leave the wallpaper there for now and just paint the ceiling or something. The ceiling there is white and has dark box beams, kind of like the beams in the living room.
I am all for bright color in the house. I think it’s one of the fringe benefits of owning. 🙂
Wow!!! this looks great…i am in the middle of
painting my bedroom walls red. i made a mistake
in the color of the ceiling, but seeing this has
inspired me! thanx…
I will try to post some pictures once we get the room finished. I’ve already taken down the tape, and put up some art, but there are no furnishings and the floor still needs to be done. I’m glad the color inspired you. 🙂
hey the red looks really awesome, i’m thinking about painting my bedroom red, but i dont know what to accent it with, i want something dark, for a romantic type setting. got any pointers? thanks
Hmm. I don’t know. It sort of depends on the shade of red you go with. There is always black, but if that’s too harsh, deep rich browns and golds are nice. Do you want romantic, or Goth? Because you could go very Goth with velvets, etc.
We are painting a wall in our bedroom red…any tips on how to get even coverage with the dark color??
btw your room looks great!!
Well, the paint we used — Devine Color — is great, and we really didn’t have any coverage problems whatsoever, even over white. We just did two coats and it was great. So I would say if you get good quality paint, you shouldn’t have an issue. One coat almost did it with the Devine… but two was better. So you might have to resign yourself to doing two coats, but it will be worth it.
Your foyer looks great and no streaks at all. Help!! I started painting my kitchen red (red gumball by Olympic) it is a kithchen and bath semi-gloss paint and it is very streaky and uneven. I primed first with a light gray and have applied three coats to one wall and it still looks bad. This is my first time using Olympic. The other three rooms that I painted have American Tradition from Lowes and are satin. Should I reprime and use another brand? Please help me. I can post pictures if that will help.
Well, I’m not an expert in this sort of thing, but I think glossy paint is more streaky by nature than matte paint is. (Our red paint was a matte finish, but the gold paint on the ceiling in our living room — not pictured here — was shiny metallic. We did this because a gilded ceiling was a typical period finish. Anyway, the gold paint was streaky. Apparently you are supposed to spray it on, not brush it on. We just kept adding coats until we could tolerate it.)
You could try spraying it and see if that helps. Otherwise, I don’t know why 3 coats wouldn’t do the trick. (Are you getting too much water in the paint or something?) Another brand might be good. Maybe see if you can get one of the brands that has small containers of sample paint to try first.
The good news is that your walls are already dark now, so you shouldn’t have too many coverage issues with the next paint.
Nikki–we used Behr satin from Home Depot for our bedroom wall and it is streaky. Not as bad as the first coat and if I stare at our wall too much it bugs me, but it’s tolerable. The one thing we did was go up and down when we rolled the 2nd coat, but a friend suggested to go diagonal to reduce the streaks…so I dunno. 🙂 I think red is just a hard color to paint on walls.
Hmmm… when we did the dark paint I rolled it on by doing a “W”, then an “M” as the painting books tell you to do — so the legs of the W and the M are sort of angled as you paint them. That probably does help. Straight up and down might be more of a problem. I don’t know, though.
ahhh painting books…novel idea! lol We didn’t even think to look at one before we left Home Depot.
I am having the same problem as Nikki. I have the same brand and the same color. I thought it was just me, I have put on 3 coats of paint and it still has so many streaks in it. I have found that if you don’t have too much paint on the roller it helps alot but that is hard to do once you roll it in the paint. I have never had this much trouble with paint, I think I will try a different brand to see if that might help. It’s so strange that we are both experiencing the same problems with the same color and brand! If someone can help me I would greatly appreciate it!!!
If 3 coats isn’t doing it, I think it might be that the brand isn’t good. I used Devine Color for my red walls — it’s more expensive but it works really well. One coat was almost enough — and that was over white primer. So maybe it’s just that for red walls, it works better with a paint that has more pigment, etc.
As far as drapes in the red room, what did you do? We painted our room red and are going to touch up the trim which is white and the ceiling is white. We’re leaving our original fixtures that are 100 yeras old and really funky gold/brass. We can’t agree on a drape.
We don’t have drapes as this is our foyer and the windows are small windows high on the wall. Drapes don’t seem necessary.
What red in the Devine Color did you use, please?
Cayenne.
Anyone think maybe Litlnemo works for Devine? No? Pushing it pretty hard for a brand I’ve never heard of …
Skeptical much? No, I don’t work for Devine, any paint company, any home improvement company, or anything that could receive any benefit from what I’ve said about the paint. Nor does anyone I know. I tried the paint because I happened to see the little packets of paint that they had as samples, bought a couple, and liked the sample paint. That’s all.
However, right after we painted our living room with it, we started seeing Devine appear in lots of the home dec/home improvement magazines. But from what I have heard it is not distributed everywhere — and it’s not in places like Home Depot anyway — so that is probably why you haven’t heard of it.
It is sad that you have to post anonymously in blogs to accuse people of shilling. Maybe if you had the guts to attack under your real identity, you might get some respect.
I painted my bedroom ‘raspberry’ using Behr paint; 3 coats & it still looked like milk of magnesia…..went back to Home Depot complaining; was told that I should’ve used a tinted primer because reds are hard to work with….in any event, it took 5 coats! I will never use that paint again! That was a few years ago; just purchased Benjamin Moore red for my basement with a tinted primer; will let you know how that works out!
The tinted primer will help. We just had white primer, but apparently the paint we used is high pigment or something. A tinted primer certainly will make the coverage easier. 🙂
I have to agree with you guys about the Behr paint. I got a deep, beautiful red to go in our guest bathroom, used a pepto-pink primer like the people at Home Depot suggested, and it looks terrible! It’s all streaky and nasty-looking. I wanted to cry when I saw how the first coat dried. The second coat of red had better improve it or I’ll never let anyone near that bathroom!
My wife and I just moved and wanted to go bold with colors in the dining room
we decided on going with “Ripe Currant” Behr paint.(we always have used Behr and always loved the results) My aunt just did a red room in her dining rroma with benjamin moore, so we already knew about needing a primer.(My aunt needed a grey primer, but we were told this shade of red req’d a pink primer)
Well after 3 coats after the primer we were disgusted, but chalked it up to aplicator,aka us, error. so I went to Home depot and talked to some guy and was given som “tips”
so we re-primed and started from scratch.
we cut in witha brush and feathered our lines, then rolled on the paint.
after 3 COATS IS STILL LOKKED HORRIBLE. I then went behr’s site and had my wife call them when i was at work. they were VERY nice and refunded all our money and told us how to apply and said it would take 4-5 COATS AFTER PRIMER!
well we RE-PRIMED AGAIN AND STARTED FROM SCRATCH AGAIN. We were told to to wait 24 hrs in between each coat.(mind you this is the connected th main living space and we have 5 kids)
we are now on our third try and on our 3rd coat. There is still some slight uneveness that you can see, but the trim lines and the rest of the wall look HORRIBLE, we think it will need AT LEAST 5 coats, but not the shade is darker than we wanted…
I love behr, BUT i will NEVER use Behr when doing red again…
Hi all —
One solution to the “streaky dark color” issue — and this is good for any other color painting also — after you do your roller sleeve section, lightly roll from ceiling to floor one time over the area just painted, this helps to pick up any “extra” streaks or glops, and once the whole wall is completed, leaves a very even looking finish — even for the dark and glossy colors.
I have just attempted my first “red room” and I am so frustrated! My 17 year-old daughter wanted a dramatic look so we went with red – planned on doing all 4 walls but have now decided to paint just one, others will be a shimmer ivory. I went with a moderately priced paint – American Tradition – and am now regreting not purchasing a more expensive brand (but probably not Behr based on comments posted). Bottom line…I should have done my homework BEFORE starting the job. After reading all of the comments posted at least now I know I’m not alone! I’m going to let it dry overnight (again)and see how it looks in the morning. We’ll see…:) Wish me luck!
Just painted one dining room wall “Cayenne Red”. It was a quart of Color Place
Paint (mixed) at Wal Mart. No drips – covered white primer in 2 coats – I love it. Now to try a companion color instead of Country White – perhaps a wheat – more tan than yellow though. Any suggestions?
The link to your foyer red walls photos is not working. Would it be possible to e-mail me a copy of this. I’m thinking about painting one of my bedroom walls red but first I wanted to see a general view of how this might look. I would greatly appreciate your assistance. Thank you.
I can’t e-mail one but I will try to get the photos back online. Check back soon.
Try Ralph Lauren for reds. It is abit expensive but I did not use a primer and painted the room in two coats and it looks fabulous. I used a satin finish and no streaks.
My husband and I tried Ralph Lauren for reds as well and our outcome was different. We didn’t primer and started from an off white colored wall and on the second coat the walls still looked uneven and with streaks. So, if you dare to try Ralph Lauren, don’t skip any steps, maybe your walls might come out better than ours. Now we know to primer dark for next time. We also got a green color from Ralph Lauren that worked well, so the quality of paint is great just get advice when going with a bold color like red. We still got faith in the paint we bought so we’re going to do a few more coats.
I was thinking of paiting my dining room a deep red with white wood look on bottom with white trim. My dining room is big. My table is black with woood and my huthch is also. What do you think??
It should look good, I guess. 🙂 It is fun to have red walls. Much more interesting than white ones!
Well, after reading all these comments on red paint, I should have researched a bit more…we are doing our bedroom over and I chose a deep garnet color in Behr Satin finish for the wood trim. We primed with white primer and my God, the STREAKS! It looks awful. I guess before we go back to Home Depot and YELL, we should try a few more coats, huh? Well, I’m glad I’m not alone in all this streakiness! LOL