Trendy dark paint: a cautionary tale.

[QuentinQuarantino]

1. Be very sure about the colour before you commit.

1. Paint for the house you actually have and not the house you have in your idle daydreams!

Am currently on coat number FOUR of matt white emulsion trying to cover up F&B Brinjal. Everything hurts and I'm convinced you can still see the darker colour .

It made my loft bedroom feel enclosed and depressing rather than the vintage-y and chic I had pictured. Don't know WHAT I was thinking 🤷🤦.

it does look amazing & I love H blue

Our living room is a deep teal (Little Greene - Goblin). It took some getting used to but I adore it!

We have archways either side of the fire in to the kitchen/diner and decided to keep that wall white so when you are sat on the sofa it isn't dark everywhere you look, which I am glad we did.

I think your bedroom looked wonderful OP!

@toomuchlikemyusername 😱😆

It did look lovely and I was v happy with it initially but after a while I found it started to make me feel a bit depressed!

Enjoyed it more in winter with cosy furnishings and twinkly lights etc but in summer it just looked and felt all wrong.

Am now going for the insta-aesthetic of white everything + plants 😂 . Might go mad with a colourful rug. Rugs are easily replaced if I get bored them 😂.

Is there not such a thing as colour block paint? Or did I imagine it?
Memories! - Had to paint over our arterial blood colour dining room and mid blue bedroom before putting last house up for sale.

It looks good @QuentinQuarantino ! Add some different cushions and a decent light fitting and the room would look fantastic!

Also, a stainblocking primer is what you first needed to use over dark paint. Then go over that in the white. If you really think you can still see the previous paint now then you can still use the primer.

We painted our bedroom in F&B Ammonite. Not that dark - the aficionados might say.

It turned our lovely room into a depressing, dank cell.

It took many, many coats to lighten.

When we moved into this house, the sitting room was F&B Rectory Red. Perfect for a Jacobean house, you might think. In reality, it was like being in some sort of torture chamber.

Light grey paint as an "undercoat" will kill strong colours better than multiple coats of white.

I also think it looks bloody gorgeous.

I've got stiffkey blue in my living room of my mid terrace and I like it much better than the white that was there before. It was a risk though.

I want to go for F&B off black in our lounge as id seen so many lovely dark rooms on Insta. We live in a new new build and DH pointed out repeatedly that all the houses I look at are period with lovely fireplaces, coving and high ceilings. I'm still faintly hopeful it would look nice but not brave enough to take the plunge!

I have Johnstone’s Regan on my hall walls with Cole and Son’s Hexagon in Teal. My decorator said when he gave us a quote if I was thinking of going for the Regan to bear in mind I would need four coats minimum to cover it if I didn’t like it. But I love it, not for everyone though.

I like it as well, but I know what you mean about being too dark for summer.

sleeping in aubergine

Ok I understand your pain op but rather than many coats of lighter colours why didn't you use a light coloured smooth wallpaper over the dark paint and paint over that? Or even lining paper?

Zinnser bullseye as a first coat to cover, if it's really dark you might need a couple of coats

Wallpaper???

I can barely handle a paintbrush! That is WAY beyond my DIY remit.

PigletJohn I did read about the grey tip but only after I'd started. I'm a bit impulsive about these things, not really a project planner, I had the first thought and an hour later was slapping Dulux on my wall.

Still glad so many of you think it looked nice, makes me feel somewhat vindicated in my original choice 😂

Oh, I like it as well.

Thanks for whoever suggested Goblin - looks lovely.

The Brinjal looked amazing! Dark colours make your room look bigger because you lose the edges. I’ve just done my kitchen in Pelt and it feels huuuuge!

It's not just about the wall colour though. We have a dark navy hallway (Dulux Breton Blue?) but we have bright white ceilings and bannisters going up the stairs, and sand-coloured carpet and it looks really good. I never feel closed in.

My downstairs is all white, every single wall. I actually love it but it's needing redone, you're all tempting me to the dark side.

I'm reminded of Adrian Mole having the opposite problem. He painted his bedroom walls black but the yellow bells on his Noddy wallpaper kept showing through.

Well Brinjal is aka sophisticated aubergine. There's nothing sophisticated about an aubergine (in whatever form )

I think it's lovely but on one wall. I find rooms all painted in one dark colour very claustrophobic.

I also thinks it looks amazing!

My parents painted the ceiling of the sitting room 248 Darrow & ball colour

It looked amazing as it was a period house with fantastic cornice, then an off white piece between picture rail and ceiling