WotW: A virtual home-sprucing

Hello again and happy Wednesday! I hope you all enjoyed rearranging your home (or creating your dream home) last week. This week, try on a virtual spruce with a coat of paint. If you are are fortunate enough to be able to splash the color on your real-life walls… I am jealous.

Better Homes and Gardens, the creators of Arrange-a-room featured last week, have also created Color-a-room to let you experiment with new colors for both the interior and the exterior of a selected demo, a photo featured in the magazine. You can select different paint colors for sections of a wall (such as the main wall and the baseboards), plus change the colors/patterns of furniture, carpet, and accents such as lampshades. Select your paint colors from basics, neutrals, or the entire line of Valspar paints (available at Lowe’s) and your upholstery fabric from generic patterns and the BHG line of fabrics. Use Color-a-home to redo the exterior and Try-a-window-treatment (very creative in the naming department, BHG!) to model different blinds and drapes.

Glidden, a paint company, lets you try on their shades of paint using the Room Painter (again, very creatively named). The Room Painter has only one layout for you to choose–an open room and an adjoining room–in which you can select the wall and trim color, but is more user friendly for those of us who are not interior designers (like me!) who struggle with color schemes. The “flip the chip” feature allows you to select one color and then flip the paint chip to see three coordinating colors. The Glidden paint tones are also arranged in a variety of collections, such as growing up colors, accent colors, and kitchen colors, and you can also choose your paint colors to match the mood of the room: refreshed, ladylike, romantic, etc.

Once you’ve selected a paint color, you can see the color full-screen (so you don’t end up with a full wall of a color that should just be an accent) and see an inspiration photo of a real room with that paint color. When you settle on the right color for you, just scroll down to save your colors (once you set up a free account, of course), use their calculator to determine how much paint you need, and print out a list of the paint colors to take to your local Home Depot store.

Fun, huh? I am staring at my eggshell white (or is it crisp linen?) walls and dreaming of the day when I have the luxury of color in my home… I’ll keep dreaming, you get painting!

PS – If you haven’t taken the WotW survey yet, you should!

Lu (or Lorene if you prefer) is the mom of one squirmy boy and the wife of a singing and dancing elementary teacher. She is the proud author of this weekly Wednesdays on the Web (WotW) segment here on Housewife Eclectic and spends the other days of the week blogging about books, crafts, recipes, and whatever else comes up at just Lu.