How awful is this colour?

[RachyB86]

We have just spent a small fortune having the majority of our home decorated for the first time ever, it’s still ongoing. It has been a huge upheaval and I am fed up of living around the decorator, it is actually making me quite depressed as we are now 4 weeks in…however - I hate this colour paint!! I adore the emerald and gold wallpaper, but the colour is just so drab. Should I book a repaint?! If so - what colour?! (In case it’s not clear, I am not good with this stuff, I thought this would look nice but clearly I got it wrong 😩) everyone is telling me to live with it because I am finding the whole decorating process so stressful they think I’m crazy to voluntarily go through it again, partner included even though he doesn’t like the colour either.

YABU - it’s not that bad, just live with it

YANBU - yes it’s awful, change it (please give a suggested colour too!)

Wallpaper: Boutique Marquise Emerald Geometric
Paint: Dulux Natural Wicker

We have Natural Wicker in our dining room. How paint actually looks in situ very much depends on the amount of natural. I say that as someone who chose a pale coffee colour for one room that looked lilac on the walls.

I'd be tempted to go lighter and crisper looking instead of matching the paper. Get the Dulux Visualizer app and have a play around. It is pretty accurate. When I tried the not-supposed-to-be-lilac paint on part of the room in the Visualizer it did indeed look lilac and I wished I'd done it before!

I love that "landlord magnolia" is a recognised paint colour!

These are incredibly helpful responses - thank you all!! Really appreciate the honesty, it’s exactly what I needed.

Also the reason we won’t repaint ourselves is because the colour goes all the way up the stairs and onto the landing so we’d need a 9ft roller plus trellis-ladder setup to cut in, and I’m not willing to tackle that 😩😩

Magnolia is much lighter, that colour is more buttercream.

More pics in case this helps!

Reminds me of the Friday Night Dinner episode where there arguing whether the curtains were yellow or cream!

That's definitely yellow though. I don't like it.

I agree with you OP, it just doesn't go at all. I'd have to change it. What a pain for you!

Do it yourself in s couple of weeks. The paint is too warm and clashes horribly. As suggested above try some testers, big squares, close to wallpaper in different lights to get a better idea, paint always dries down differently form pot. Soft sage, or dove grey, something cool and matt. The shiny wipeable paint looks cheap and institutional.

The paint has that horrible yellow undertone to it. I also think you should look at getting it repainted.

My house was painted that shade and whilst it didn’t match anything I had it made the house look bright and sunny.
I ended up repainting the bathroom because it didn’t look good with anything ( white suite looked shit, blue or green accessories looked shit, chrome looked shit) but actually the colour on its own worked with the light beautifully and cheered me up. I miss it.

I’ve kept it in the living room and it’s ended lots of naturals, green plants and any metals can’t be too matchy.
Rooms with chrome or silver mirrors and lamps etc have gone white.

That wallpaper would give me a headache and feel nauseous

I couldn’t live with it either OP.

Both the wallpaper and the paint are really bad.

Yes, the paint is too yellowy. We had our hallway done in expensive Paint Library Cashmere-what I thought was going to be a subtle earthy warmth was yellow. My DH said live with it but while the decorator had only done one coat, I bought Little Greene Slaked Lime mid and he went over it. Luckily, one coat did the trick so we didn’t owe him any more money and the extra eighty quid for the paint was so worth it. But if I’d left it and put everything back, it would’ve grated every time I saw it.

Yes I'm afraid that doesn't go at all, it's very... Magnolia.

I'd go with a cooler taupe or even a cool champagne colour with that shade of green. Eg:

If you can't change the wallpaper, then try a very very pale blue/grey. Basically an off-white that leans a bluey dove grey.

It's quite yellow. Dulux Timeless is a nice off white without yellow undertones.

That’s a good shout-it will go very well.

At least they only wallpapered half way up the stairwell.

The "feature wall" on my enormous stairwell was a right pain in the arse to remove because it was so high up.

That colour looks more greeny than magnolia. I have my whole house done in trade magnolia from B&Q. I quite like it - it's neutral, looks fresh and easy to paint over for the next incumbunt. All the real work though was actually fixing the state of the walls and the appalling paint job of the last owner (massive streaks and swirls, blobs of hardened paint, unclear lines, random application of sealant) - it was though it was done by a 5 year old. It was a kind of awful pale green colour. Actually putting on the new coat took no time at all.

You can add colour via pictures and other decorations, which are much easier to replace than repainting the entire house. I would never paint a place in a non neutral colour unless I was destined to live there for ages.

Agree the champagne colour above is a good one - much more muted. I actually quite like the wallpaper

It’s not going to help your bank account or stress to show more pictures. That shade of yellow is simply only seen on the rentals listings of Zoopla…

I'm sorry but it all looks pretty bad. The wallpaper would have been cool in somewhere like a small downstairs loo on one wall, but your photos are giving me a headache.

In terms of paint- We had an an absolute nightmare trying to choose the right shade of 'neutral' for our living room and hallways. Luckily we painted the living room ourselves but we ended up painting it multiple times as each 'neutral' we chose just looked awful and yellowy or magnolia-y. I suspect this is what has happened with you, you probably chose it thinking it's a subtle neutral colour but instead it looks pale yellow. I really sympathise.

In the end we went with Dulux timeless which was much lighter and more 'boring' than we originally thought we wanted to go but it looks so so nice and fresh, not too warm, not too cold, not too grey, not too yellow. We did the ceilings in timeless as well so that the walls didn't look grubby next to a pure white ceiling and it's gorgeous.

The paper you have chosen is opulent but the paint doesn't follow that theme. However it is a hard paper to colour match, and for simplicity I would colour match to the secondary colour in the paper, but the shade would need to blend with the carpet too. From the photos I would look for a shade in the beige spectrum and get lots of tester pots to try. Following on the opulence style of the paper, lots of glamorous lighting and mirrors too.

I agree the colour is awful, looks like a drab drs waiting room. Something with a brown/green base would look better imo. So think sandy or mushroomy rather than yellow.

Sage green goes lovely with emerald and gold. I know for a fact as it's my kitchen colour scheme 😁