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Starry Nights


In the past months, we’ve been doing some pretty significant renovations at our house. Refinished the floors and stained them a color my husband and I created, (they look marvelous), tore down two walls, installed new windows, new insulation, new electrical and new exterior siding.

The room we opened up is our den and once all of the construction was done it was time to consider what colors to paint our den. Evidently, my husband Ray had been thinking about our den colors. Before we had discussed what colors we may want our den to be, I discovered Ray staring at the wall behind our tv. A retired Assistant Director in the film business, he had strong feelings about how our tv viewing zone should look. He said, “I want the wall behind the tv to be painted a dark blue.” Great idea, I thought.

The next day, as we were considering various dark blues, I said, “This one is called Starry Night.” Ray look surprised and said, “That’s amazing. I had a dream last night that we painted the wall Starry Night.” Of course I had to purchase a sample of it even though I thought that particular hue would be too bright.

It was too bright.

The next day, I pulled out a few more hues and since my husband was out, I showed them to our builder, who has a good eye. He remained unmoved by the blues, but he did very much like a dark gray green I had thrown into the mix.

Later I showed Ray the dark gray green, and after nearly two months of renovation disruption, He said, “I don’t care what color you paint it, I just want it done.”

Against my better judgment, I bought a sample of the dark gray green. It must have been the anarchist in me who had to mix things up. I painted the wall the dark gray green and instantly hated it. I wanted to gaze into a starry night and I was looking at sludge.

My first instincts were right. I would never second guess myself with a client, but at home, wanting to please my husband, well, that’s a different story… I should have listened to myself and chosen a blue that I thought would work.

So I went back to the blues, chose one that was deep, didn’t fall off into black, worked with our rugs and sofa fabric, and still read ‘blue.’ It was perfect.

Every eye in the house approved this final blue. Color harmony was ours once again.

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