Color Blocking

One of the reasons I bought this house was the flex space in the basement that I could use for my son’s playroom. As you can see from the Before photo, there was nothing playful about this room when I started. An overgrown shrub outside the window blocked most of the natural light, and the walls were painted a dull gray. The dingy carpet, dated (and very dirty) ceiling fan and surround sound speakers all had to go. I painted the walls a fresh, bright, white and replaced the carpet with the same LVP white oak flooring I installed in the rest of the house. That gave me a clean slate to work from.

I knew I wanted to keep the room light and bright and use bold pops of color to keep it playful, so I purchased the blue sofa and orange locker TV credenza. And that’s where the room stayed for several months after we moved in. When I finally got around to finishing this room, I decided to add those bold pops of color to the walls using color blocking.

I selected four colors to use, pulling the blue and orange from the existing furniture pieces, and adding yellow and green. I knew I wanted to do something on the TV and couch walls and decided to run a continuous stripe of green around the room to tie everything together. I decided how thick I wanted the stripe to be and where on the wall I wanted to place it. Then I used my 4’ level to draw level lines for the top and bottom of the stripe all around the room. Once the lines were up, I taped them off with painter’s tape. 

One lesson I’ve learned through my painting experience is that paint WILL bleed under painter’s tape no matter how good you seal it. To avoid hours of touch-ups, I used the white background wall color to seal the edges, rolling over the tape lines and letting it dry before using my green paint. I applied two coats of paint and then pulled the tape. It worked great! Only one touch-up in the corner where I didn’t seal the edge well enough with the white.

Once the stripe was up, I started playing around with the other shapes I would use to add the other colors. I used my painters tape to roughly mark out the shapes, sizes, and placement and adjust and readjust as needed until I was happy with the composition. Then I used my pencil to mark the inside edges of the shapes and drew the outlines of them using my 4’ level and taped them off. I also sealed the seams with the background paint color, like I did with the stripe. But this time, I also had to use the green paint anywhere the new shapes met up with or overlapped the green stripe.

This is after two coats of paint. I utlimately used six coats to cover the green as best as I could.

Next, I started applying the color paint. If you’re painting any areas over another color and using bold colors like I was, DO NOT DO THIS! I should have primed where I was overlapping colors. For example, the orange vertical stripe over the green horizontal stripe took me six coats of paint and I STILL feel like you can see the green behind it. After I learned this lesson the hard way, I primed before painting the blue rectangles on each wall and was much happier with how those turned out. Once the final coats of paint were up, I pulled the tape and touched up any areas where there was bleeding or gaps.

It definitely added the young, playful color I wanted in the room while keeping it light and airy.