Painting my Bedroom

Changing up my bedroom colour

I've had the same bedroom for most of the past twelve years, with the same paint, and wanted to change. The walls were blue and white and rather glossy, so the room always had a rather cool feel to it which wasn't very welcoming. I decided to paint the room red to match the rug in the room and to have a more warm and welcoming feel.

I got a few Benjamin Moore red paint chips and compared them in the day with daylight, and at night with indoor lighting. I ended up deciding on redstone, 2009-10. I also decided on an eggshell finish. I wanted to go with matte originally, but without a finish the wall would be harder to clean and could stain. Eggshell is the lowest level of finish I could get. I specifically went with Benjamin Moore Regal Select since it was a paint and primer mix. I needed primer for the blue section of the wall, since it's strong dark colour.

Preparation

Prepping was far more time consuming than the painting itself. I removed almost everything from the room and laid down a plastic covering on the ground. I masked off the floor and wall trims, door trims, and ceiling edges. Since the original paint is more glossy than the eggshell finish I'll be applying, I sanded all the walls with some sandpaper to roughen up the finish for the new paint to bond to. After sanding I wiped down all the walls and vacuumed them to make sure there were no specks left.

Painting

When I first opened the paint can I was pretty shocked at how brilliant the colour was. I was starting to have second thoughts but I was too far into the process to stop, so I went ahead and painted. I painted around all the trims with a paintbrush, then covered the walls using a paint roller.

One coat in and I was still a bit apprehensive. The colour looked a bit off from what I was hoping, though this was still only one coat on dark paint with warm artificial lighting.

I ended up needing three to four coats in some places to get an even tone. Darker paints have more pigment and are thicker which I wasn't used to. Once I finished painting and put the room back together I found the colour to still be odd, though it was still under artificial lighting, so I waited till the next day to make a final judgement. With natural lighting the room looked far better. As the paint set and completely dried over the next couple of days, I found the colour became more like what I was looking for. Though it's also possible that I was just getting used to it.

The change from a light blue and white to a red room was still shocking for a couple of days, but as time went on I really came to appreciate how warm the red made the room feel. It gave more depth to the room and really fit the red of the rug.

Photos