Painter's Remorse

Our entire house (interior) was painted 8.5 years ago when we moved in. In the years since then we've had a plethora of youngsters in the house, thereby causing the walls to get looking mighty trashed. (this phemonenon was made worse by the fact that for some reason flat paint was selected for some of the rooms. Flat paint just doesn't clean nicely.)

So for quite some time now I've been thinking about repainting the house. The painting we did way-back-when is a nice medium pale yellow on the walls, with white trim. It's very peaceful and subtly cheerful, which was the look I was going for. We have dark red loveseats in our living room, and those look great with the yellow walls.

Well, I've been thinking about a bolder look. The other day we bought some paint and got to work. One large wall was painted a dark red, and it is looking really pretty good, although it is quite a change! I had this idea to use a variety of autumny colors on various walls in the living room and into the kitchen, which are open to each other.

So today I decided to paint a swatch on one wall of an orangey-yellow. And on another wall I did a swatch of a fairly dark sage green.

And now I am having painter's remorse.

The orange--it makes me feel like crying.

Seriously. Certain things about colors or placement of things in my home can bring me to tears. Probably because it's seriously bad feng shui or something, right? :)

The green isn't that bad, but it feels so dark.

My daughter mentioned that she was feeling overpowered with the colors, and like we were losing our peaceful, cheery living room. Which put to words pretty much exactly what I was thinking.

So, back to the drawing board.

I think that the red wall can stay, and that maybe a very small wall behind some cabinets could use the red in the kitchen. But I think that I need to go find a yellow that is light and cheery, while being able to hold it's own next to the red. Yellow has my heart. What can I say?