Questions about paint colours

[marjolaine]

Doing up my fixer-upper (first owned home yay!) and have decided to be more adventurous and go for some colour instead of my usual preferred plain, safe white/cream. For decorating, I like mellow, muted colours like Laura Ashley's dove grey, pale French grey, seaspray, eau de nil and pale apple (just painted in the dining room with isodore wallpaper accent wall). But, I read a thread asking why the op's house wasn't selling and posters were, hmm, uncomplimentary on her paint/wallpaper choices. So, now I'm worried in case when it comes time to sell (probably in next 3-5 years) people will hate my choices! How much would the decorating affect your opinion of a house?

Also, have been looking at colour chart from Laura Ashley (mil gave me the catalogue, I don't work there honest!) and I really liked either pale duck egg or duck egg for DC2's room. But is duck egg over now? Will it date the room- I think it was really popular a few years ago? And, if not, which one is better for a south- and west-facing smallish bedroom?

Thought of something I forgot- has anyone tried the Dulux light+space paint? I was looking at the blue and green ones but thought they looked a bit icy and cold?

In my last flat I had Laura Ashley eau de nil in the hall and duck egg in the spare bedroom and it sold no problem.
In this house I have a Dulux colour very similar to the eau de nil in the hall and I have french grey in the bedroom and I have just sold again.
I think the colours you are talking about are actually fairly neutral and easy to live with. But this is your home - you should decorate it however you like.
I think we have been brainwashed by property programmes into always thinking about the future sale potential. Do what you want and enjoy it. If need be you can always go over it with cheap magnolia when it is time to sell.

Your home is for enjoying now.

You may be ok with painting over with beige when you've had enough of the house and genuinely want to move on.

But right now, decorate it how you like and love it.

Yes that's true, I may just keep the giant tub of white we're using as undercoat in the garage and paint over if necessary, difficult in the bedroom though (accent wall Crown celestite). Coloured walls are just quite far outside my comfort zone! My mum has colour in her house and while not my taste it looks nice and she gets lots of complements, she lives abroad though, in an place known for bad taste
I guess on that note I shouldn't care if duck egg is out of date, as long as I like it! Has anyone used the LA one? Is it quite blue?

I used it on my kitchen cupboards a few years ago and it's a perfect balance of blue and green IMO.

The pale Parisienne blue is also very gorgeous on - lovely depth to it.

We've had testers of some of the Light and Space colours in the past, but we weren't impressed with the finish compared to normal Dulux emulsion.

I think most people can live with those kind of muted colours and at least they are fairly easy to paint over.

Very strong colours e.g reds/aubergine automatically make me think mucho paint will be needed.

I think duck egg is quite classic & not such a whim of fashion colour as teal

We've just painted our kitchen/diner in Laura Ashley's Duck Egg Blue and it looks great. Everyone has commented on what a lovely colour it is.

tbh, if I was looking at a house, paint colour wouldn't bother me at all as it's easily changed.

I think your colour choices are safe enough.
The risk of doing it according to what will sell is that by the time you want to sell fashions will have changed (grey seems to be the colour for a lot of developers at the minute but that might or might not be a passing fad) and then you'll have lived with a colour that isn't your favourite, all for nothing.

Don't worry about the threads where people slag off other people's houses. Whatever you do someone on here will hate it.

Ha! Thanks everyone, feeling a little bit better about it.

MrsAMerrick and LaurieFairyCake good to know LA duck egg is actually nice in real life! I'll look up parisienne blue too. I find that testers aren't the same as actually painting the wall for some reason; twice now something that looked nice on the cardboard was awful on.

member yes, at least these colours should be easy to paint over! I painted my room the wrong-for-me colour so did one coat of white and one coat of the colour I ended up with and had a different room just over 24 hours later. One house I lived in had aubergine walls I assume in an attempt to match the forest green and maroon fireplace tiles and that was a complete pain to paint over.

Tunip yes that was my worry; that I went for something trendy or worse trendy a few years ago and hated now and that put people off! I suppose though if every room was magnolia someone would hate that too...