We are entering week two of transforming our small San Francisco dining room for the One Room Challenge. First step is paint color. I’ll talk a little bit about our decision on the paint color and the process .
My other half, Jeffry, and I wanted to transform our small dining room, which is really just a small extension off the kitchen, into a stylish little space mostly for us to enjoy meals together and occasionally friends or family members. If you remember from my first post, it also wanted terribly functional. We had recently moved to San Francisco and our old dining table was just too large for the space.
We briefly considered doing the wallpaper but decided it might not be a good idea because it is right off the kitchen and it pretty much has zero ventilation. We live in an older building, circa 1920’s, and there’s no venting installed. Accumulation of heat and humidity could cause a problem with peel and stick wallpaper. Being an apartment, we didn’t want to deal with pasting wallpaper - since restoring to the original condition would be more difficult. So…paint was the way to go - easy to do and also to change later.
I originally envisioned Matte Black walls to make a bold statement - I'm in love with dark color statement walls, but Jeffry wasn’t on board with the black; he wanted blue. I love blue but I didn’t want to have a blue room.
I had recently done project for the luxury hotel, Ritz Carlton - San Francisco for a holiday pop-up store which you can read about it here. The paint used, After Midnight by Benjamin Moore I felt would be a good compromise for my love of dark bold drama and Jeffry’s blue. We played around with some paint samples at our neighborhood hardware store and decided to go ahead with Midnight Navy by Benjamin Moore; very close to the After Midnight, I had used before.
Here is the paint color sample from their website.
Midnight Navy by Benjamin Moore
We painted just two walls for the dining room. We have a large window that lets in plenty of natural light, but it is a small space. Any more paint and it would have started feeling enclosed. Two walls help balance the overall room look and colors with the original white trim and ceilings.
So we just painted the two walls. You can see how it turned out here.
We are really pleased with how it turned out!
As I mentioned in the first blog, we have some cracks in the wall due to old repairs. They drove me crazy. The fresh paint helps mask that problem. Once completed, I can’t tell you how obsessed I am with how good it looks. It also put to rest some of Jeffry’s concern that it would be too dark; but he’s also thrilled with the result. The white trim around these original windows really pop against the dark paint color as well.
That shows the detail of the window trim which adds the character to this space! Love it! We are excited to share you with our next step for this ORC project. You can take a look at the overall design plan for the dining room here.
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