Broccoli Rob and I finally got around to having our bedroom painted. We wanted a nice, soothing color and researched some feng shui-ey websites to get the right shade of calmness and serenity, appropriate for sleep. Normally, I'm pretty color-challenged. I like bold, bright colors, whether they're in fashion or not. Give me primary colors and keep the pastels. My kitchen is orange. My dining room is red (already red when we bought the place, and I think the red walls solidified the deal). My kids may say the colors I like can even be obnoxiously loud, but I like 'em. Even my personal trainer had to look me up and down in disbelief because I matched my hot pink workout gloves with the same color sneakers.
But trying to bring in a well-liked color into a peaceable-to-be bedroom can be a challenge, especially because Broccoli Rob and I have very different tastes. Add to that, Broccoli Rob's devotion to spirituality and I was afraid I was going to say "just make the walls white" to the painter if I got frustrated if we couldn’t agree on a color. So we go to youtube to check out bedroom feng shui colors and find that yellows are too bright and energizing, oranges and reds almost illegal in the bedroom with suggestions toward earth tones of greens, browns and beige the most promising of boudoir colors. But beige walls are like white walls. BORING. And of course an interior brown color is only good if you're a hibernating bear.
So it comes down to green. But my den is a beautiful sage green and I don't want to rival that color. Bright greens are, well, too bright for sleeping, but we couldn’t agree on the gazillion of other greens on the large color wheel. We finally pick a green color, probably because we both loved the name...'feel the energy'...and the painter, who has obviously not had work recently said he will come to paint the next morning. Didn't give us much chance to stew about this.
The painter and his assistant come in the morning and I run off to work with the promise that the bedroom will be finished at the end of the day. My younger daughter (I'm now going to call her Broccoli Bubelah) is the first one home. She sends me a text that reads "saw the room--it's bright." I start to get a little nervous since this sounds like it’s not the pretty green I selected. Did I make a color mistake? Should I have gone to Home Depot and bought a pint of the "feel the energy" green paint and slapped a little on the wall in advance so we could have contemplated it? Should I not have been so eager to help the painter’s finances by agreeing to the quick booking? Should I not insist that everything in my life has to somehow be related to green vegetables? I then call the painter and ask him how it looks. He said "it's neon." When he hears the hesitation in my voice, he becomes sympathic and says that he can paint it another color 'at cost' on another day. Okay, now I'm plotzing. I wait 3 years to finally call the painter and I schedule everything right away and then question my color choice? Was I going to come home to a bedroom the shade of a sharpie green highlighter?
But when I get home, I walk into the bedroom and immediately love the color. Yes, a little bright, but just that kind of bold color that I love. Broccoli Rob likes it too, so it stays. And I’m sleeping so well in this room, so I’d like to attribute this to the new color. Broccoli Baby was consulted for accents and accessories as this is her specialty and she’s under orders not to make any comment about the new green color. She agrees and all is well. Broccoli Rob thought the red curtains and red linens that were in the room previously could stay, so now I see he’s much more color challenged than I am. I’ll be taking Broccoli Baby’s advice and getting beige and brown items to go in our new room!
