The Colors Of A Bitter-Sweet Memory

This week is going to be a tough one for me. My in-laws will be visiting us for a week and I know it will be the last time they come to our home.

I say this because they are 87 and 86 years old, and this trip was already rescheduled once, but this time, it’s a go. Traveling at this age is not an easy feat, as you can imagine, so I’m pretty sure that on some level, they also know it will be the last time they come to our home, and perhaps there will be many “lasts” for them as well.

This brings me back to color. Color always, always makes me feel good, so when I have an extreme emotion, I hit the design board and just play around with colors until it visually feels good, much like what you all should be doing for your home. These are the Healing Hues that are vibrationally strong colors, for those who tap into that sort of thing; otherwise, it’s “just a pretty color palette” for the rest of you. I’m here for the people who understand the frequency of color and how it has such a strong effect on the mind, body, and spirit. Again, for those of you who don’t get it, you can get your generic color palette at Etsy where they pump them out like rabbits and be on your way.

The colors I have included in the graphic above are my all-time favorite colors, and yes, there are only three. I love these colors, I know how they feel, because I have them in my home.

Green will always be one of my favorite colors, I love the soft, sagey, naturalness of this green because it reminds of the hues I find when I’m walking in the woods. I’ve associated this color with a memory, many of them.

The blue, which if you’ve been reading my blog, has never been a favorite color of my yet here it is, in my top three, why? Because of a memory. I had posted about a year ago that my 95 year old dad was going to live with me and this is the color I chose for his room, which he loved. This made me happy, may him happy, and the room was beautiful.

The last color is the pale yellow which is one of the most beautiful buttery yellows I’ve discovered in all of my paint decks. This color has a very special memory for me, which is one of the reasons I love it so much.

When my dad passed, I again repainted the guest bedroom. The blue was replaced by that beautiful pale yellow, and this graphic does it no justice; it’s a color that you have to see on the wall. Now here is where the magic happens. I had to choose a color that was different from the blue yet matched the rest of the colors in my home, the green being one of them.

I knew it had to be some type of neutral, but which one? Oh, and I forgot to mention, the bathroom that connects to this room is a gorgeous, earthy clay color, and for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of it, but I know it’s a Valspar color.

So I ordered a bunch of 8x10 color samples that I liked from Sherwin Williams and taped them to the wall; there had to be at least a dozen. This was not going to be easy. Picking colors for my own home is such a challenge; it took me two weeks to choose that green for my living room, I kid you not. I laugh at myself because I can visually design a full color palette for a home that is 3400 square feet in minutes, and it takes me forever to choose just one color for a room in my home.

I called my husband into the room to help me pick a color, but he, of course, didn’t want anything to do with the decision for fear of him picking the wrong color, which is funny but I get it. We both stared at the color pages on the wall and agreed that there was one that stood out from the rest, and that color would be the one.

Walking over to the wall, I peeled it off, flipped it over, and looked at the name. It was Gardenia by Sherwin Williams. I started crying and knew that this was 100% the right color for the guest room.

Gardenia was my mom’s favorite flower. She even wore the most beautiful flower I’ve ever seen, pinned to her dress that she wore on my wedding day. This color, I truly believe, was chosen by my mom who had already passed just a few months prior to my painting the guest room again.

This, my friends, was an extremely emotional time in my life, and I think of this every time I walk into the guest room. The room is beautiful, and the color holds a very precious memory for me. This is how we should choose colors for our home, for our minds, body, and spirit.

If you have a special story like mine that you’d like to share with me so I can help you find your special colors, please email me. You’ll find my contact information at the top of my blog. Color is special, my friends, and our memories are like gold. Hold them close and near to your heart.