Painting Project: {Terra Cotta}

Our living room is probably one of my favorite rooms in our entire house.  It is comfy, cozy, and casual.  We have cathedral ceilings and several large windows that let in a lot of light, so the room always feels open and airy.  But the walls are still the basic builder color that we chose when we built our home.  It a wonderful neutral, but it's just that...neutral.  I'm longing for the unexpected punch of color, and I think I have just the thing.  Terra-cotta!!! Here is the feature wall getting the makeover.

Our overall theme for the room is international travel.  Deep, rich colors; vintage travel posters; leather furniture;  interesting, detailed fabrics on pillows and accessories.  Terra-cotta has always reminded me of the Southwest (think Grand Canyon and clay pottery) where a very distinct history and culture is represented. Sort of international while still being national : )

I found this lovely room in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine.  It's an older issue, so when I tried searching for this room and the name of the paint color, I couldn't find it.  Bummer!

So I searched and found this very similar color: Valspar Autumn Russet.  It's not exact but it's pretty close. 

Designer Allison Smith gave some advice on using terra-cotta within a room.  She says, "Lighting is critical. Dark terra-cotta needs to be in a room with a lot of direct light or it will feel too heavy."  Well, we've got the "lots of light thing" down. She also says in order to get a light, but still rich tone, start with a dark terra-cotta you love.  Then add white to the formula (25 percent is a good place to start) to get a more livable color.  "If you start light on the paint chip, you'll just get a pinker color."  

So I'm trying to decide if I should just use this paint chip color or start darker and add white.  I've never played around with color like that before.  I've always just chosen a color off of the paint chip shelf.  I'm not even sure how to go about doing it! We shall see.  

I'm excited about it and can't wait to post pictures when I'm done.  

Hope you all are having a great summer!!!  I sure am.  I'm getting a lot accomplished.