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When we moved into our new house at the beginning of October, I had to choose a new colour for my bedroom. As its previous occupant was the three year old daughter of the last owner of the house, it was a rather girly pink, and I wanted an alternative that reflected the fact that I am (a) male, and (b) straight. Admittedly, apart from that, I didn’t have much of an idea what colour I wanted it to be, other than that it needed to be as un-magnolia as possible. Having spent most of my teens and twenties in houses in which every single room was painted magnolia, I’ve developed a long-standing hankering after something at least a little bit different.

So, I toddled along to Homebase the weekend before our move and had a flick through the catalogue.

The colour that caught my attention was Dulux Roasted Red (#AE5350 for HTML geeks): a fairly deep red, but it looked good in the brochure with the top half of the room in the photograph painted that particular colour and the bottom half in a kind of cream. So, I bought a couple of tubs of the stuff and headed to the checkout. Some light coloured bedding, curtains and furniture would finish off the colour scheme rather nicely, I thought.

When we got home, I began to have one or two second thoughts, and wondered if a combination of light orange and blue would be a better idea and I should go back to Homebase and change it. However, after chatting to one or two people, I came to the conclusion that my idea could be quite successful. Besides, I like to experiment (that’s why I did science at university, after all) so, on went the paint.

The second thoughts started to increase as the paint went on and I saw just how dark it looked,  and when I found that my audacious and outrageous choice of colour was drawing unwarranted attention to me among the folks from church who were in helping us paint the house, I began to regret it. Being the hopelessly introverted kind of character that I am, unwarranted attention is not exactly my cup of tea, after all. Then when eleven-year-old Callum from next door, who was helping with the painting, said that it reminded him of the punishment room at his school (Forest Boys), I started to wonder if this was set to be my number one worst decision of 2006.

However, by now we had painted about three quarters of the room, and with the new carpets due to be laid the following morning and our belongings to come in the afternoon, and Homebase well and truly shut as it was now ten o’clock at night, there was not a lot I could do but to press on and make the most of it. Besides, the brilliant white paint on the roof did at least make it look a little bit Christmassy, if nothing else.

The walls were pretty dark and it did make the room feel a good deal smaller and closed in than before, and it actually turned out to feel quite oppressive. In an attempt to brighten it up a bit, I got hold of a large map of the world that was sitting in the study and put it up on the wall. This made things marginally better, but the improvement was small enough to suggest to me that my idea of a cream-coloured wardrobe, bedspread and curtains would not be sufficient for it to work out in the end. Besides which, having a room that looks like the punishment room at Forest Boys could adversely affect the resale value of the house.

So, after suffering in silence for three months or so, last weekend I decided that enough was enough, I was going for the light orange and blue after all.

Monday lunchtime, I was back in Homebase, scanning my eye along the shelves of cans of paint. It didn’t take me all that long to pick out the colours I was after: Dulux Natural Saffron (#E2BF86) and Dulux Blue Babe (#96B5D4) luxury silk emulsion. Monday evening, I shifted my bed away from the wall, put down some dust sheets and started slapping the paint on.

The improvement was immediate and dramatic, and I could tell straight away that it was going to make a big difference. The contrast between the new colours and the old brick red made it look a bit like a 1980s derelict kindergarten building in an inner city council estate, but even so, it was obvious that it would work out fine with the blue on the end walls and the saffron on the sides. Some more paint went on every evening except Wednesday, when we were out, and Friday, when I spent most of the evening sleeping off the week’s hard work, and when I finally got the last red wall painted over yesterday, it at last looked no longer like the Black Hole of Calcutta nor a derelict council estate, but like something that I’m not ashamed to call my bedroom.

I woke this morning feeling much brighter and happier, and actually invigorated enough to make getting out of bed seem easy. I can see now why people go for magnolia so often, even though I still think it’s the most boring colour of paint on the face of the planet. The lesson has been learned and the repentance has been done. For a bedroom, deep red walls suck.

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Posted at 23:35 on 21 January 2007.
Tagged: painting