Trends of 2012 - More Gray

The gray trend is definitely not over.  This color has grown on me.  There are a lot of great ways to make it work and look really good.  If you were thinking of doing gray, go for it, I have a feeling it's going to be around as a popular choice for a few more years.

for other 2012 top trends see:  BLUE , WALLPAPER, WHITE

2011 Paint Picks - Part 6

It's a our final entry on this subject!  I bet you never thought we'd get here (I was starting to think maybe we wouldn't...quite frankly, I'm ready to move on to another topic!)  Still, of all the paint choices we've talked about so far, this one is by far the most ubiquitous and most trendy and most used color of 2011.  And obviously, I'm a little bit prone to trends myself (even though I often think I'm really not) because even I painted a room this color in the past year, and I never thought I would paint a room gray.  I've already blogged this color a few times in the past 6 months or so, but here are some images I had left in my files: 

I'm always super hesitant about wallpaper - just because it can be tricky to hang, and a major pain to try to remove.  But this one is a keeper.  I feel like this feminine and slightly shabby thing seems fresh here because of that gray paper on the wall. 

I must really like this because I saved it twice.  I love the orange (another of our top trending colors) with that gray.  Another trend?  The ever present map motif, as seen on the floor. 

Another trend check - maps? yes, yellow and gray? yes, smidge of tiffanyesque blue? yes - this room has it all.

I love how they've added a lot of colors with the gray in this room (another trend? lavendar)

Decadent and gorgeous

When you start looking for the right gray you realize very quickly there are an endless amount of them - everything from bordering on blue, purple, brown, white and black it can be really hard to choose the right one.  This one is lovely. 

I'm probably heavily influenced by the idea of taking a nap in that bed, but this is nice.

maybe my favorite of all these images.  I'm such a sucker for that Hermes orange with that gray paper. 

Gray and white is such a nice combination. 

big smiles here with the eames rocker and the orange

lovely & trending with purple too

I don't see it in kitchens all that often, but it's very good here.  And with that SMEG fridge in that color?  so great.

This is the darkest gray charcoal you can get to without veering into black.  Love it w/ all the yellow.  It's a very restful contemplative space.  

I wonder what trends 2012 will bring? I like to analyze what I see the least of to get an idea of where the trends might go. I rarely see much red these days, even though there was that moment of sort of coraly - pinky red. I wouldn't be surprised if Red makes a comeback in the next year. Any predictions?

The most popular trend in color (by far)

Which is technically almost not a color. Gray is what you get when you mix white and black. And it's what you get when you mix too many colors together (remember when you used to ruin your kiddie water colors by not cleaning your brush between colors? ). Even though design firms and paint companies and color experts try every year to predict, forecast and influence "color of the year", at the end of the day, it's really up to the consumer what will become a trend and what won't. Gray has become more and more popular in the past couple of years and I would say it has emerged this year as THE most popular decor color. It's very versatile, can be paired with any other color easily, and isn't something we've seen a whole lot of in the past.

I've said before I'm not a super huge fan of gray generally, but I prefer it by far over beige and browns. And I do often save images of gray that I think are done spectacularly well. Enjoy:

Finally Finished - Latest Project!

I really wanted to finish this way before now but it just wasn't happening. Remember when I first announced this project and I had some ideas, well you can go click on that link to read about it, or maybe this photo will remind you of the horrible blue I was dealing with before:

Anyway, I had to re-think several of my ideas and my dad solved one problem for me (the closet was full of storage and the closet never worked very well for clothes, my dad basically re-built it while he was in town and that totally solved my problem there, then I culled down the storage and moved some of it to the smaller bedroom, which will become Holden's when he gets home...that will be one of my next projects)

So here are the after photos, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out considering I had to work with the blue carpet. I decided not to go as dark with the paint as I had been planning and went gray instead of black or charcoal. I think it was best. The photos were taken in the afternoon when there is a lot of light in that room, on a not so great camera, so there are a lot of sun spots on the shots.

I knew with the gray walls and the blue carpet I had to figure out some way to pull it all together, and Brennan was pretty set on this bed. It's a low (platform style) bed like I had planned on but the headboard was different than I expected. Later, I realized it matched the wood in the dresser anyway, so I incorporated a few beige items into the decor and trim. Then I added the green and still hinted at the blue. I like the way it turned out.

I think the gray we chose ended up working with both the carpet, and the blue lights and fan, which I also didn't want to have to deal with replacing.

See how my dad totally made this a useable closet again? Thanks dad. There are no closet doors so I hung black curtains that can be pulled closed.

Then I added some original art work that we put together - I might add a little more later, but for now I think we're finished.

I also had to decide if I wanted to keep the stencil behind the door Holden had done a long time ago. He took a photo of a little girl at the beach in california years ago, then he blew it up into a stencil and had stencil'd it on the backside of the bedroom door. So it's a completely original Holden Hays artwork. In the end, I didn't have the heart to paint over it, so I painted around it and left the hot pink. Brennan wanted to british flag hung (it cracked me up when I was hanging it...it says "made in the USA" on the back of it. So apparently, we don't make many things here in the US, but we make british flags...

I'm so glad to be done! On to the next project.