Thanks to all your feedback about our shift here at Lars. To be super honest, I’m still trying to figure out what it exactly means and haven’t yet begun to figure out how to implement it here in a clear and focused way. While we do some work behind the scenes, I thought it would be helpful to explore some topics together. Want to join us in solving this together? Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments. I read every single one and will try to respond to all.
I thought I’d start by exploring why we get scared about color including some personal stories though I forgot until I literally started writing them down. Can’t wait to discuss!
Do you love color? But also terrified of it?!
As far as I can remember, I’ve always loved color. I even remember sitting around a campfire circle my first week of college sharing the cockles of our hearts with some new friends. What did I share? “I love color, no like you don’t understand, I really love color”. Ha! I guess I had an inkling even then!
But growing up I didn’t know what color meant to me nor how it could be a part of my life. I mean, how could I? I was still experimenting. Really wish I could find some high school photos to illustrate this story, but here we are:
Fail: Painting my high school bedroom
Once, in high school, I really wanted to paint my all-white room. Sound familiar? I had my great grandmother’s antique wood bedroom set that’s very lovely, just dark and rather Victorian looking. There wasn’t too much in there that indicated my personality. My mom was really into periwinkle at the time and I thought it would be a good choice for the walls. I remember nothing about the process of selecting the color or putting it on but on it went and the more it went the more TERRIFIED I got. I couldn’t imagine being surrounded by it all the time.
We didn’t get too much farther when called it the whole thing off. I was Color Scared! Surely, I would suffocate in all that color! An unfinished painted periwinkle room was left for the rest of my high school experience–didn’t bother to change it back.
Color Scared Diagnosis
In hind sight, the Color Scare Diagnosis was because of the unknown. I didn’t know what it was going to look like in the end and I certainly had no idea what it was going to look like with posters or artwork on the walls. It would have been THE BOMB (in true 90s high school fashion).
Fast forward about ten years to I’m living in Washington, DC in a small house with 3 roommates after graduating college. My roommate really wanted to paint our kitchen a dark green. I had never done anything so drastic and was SURE that dark green was NOT a good choice. It was going to be too dark and blegh! I had been living in college apartments where we couldn’t do anything to the apartment besides sticky tack and posters and colorful duvet covers. She did one coat of paint and I just about lost it. I was…
COLOR SCARED!
But then she put up a poster in lovely reds and yellows and blacks and all of a sudden it looked…well, lovely! She had the foresight (and maybe the experience) to know that it was going to work out.
Living in a rental with color–don’t be scared!
Many many years later, when Paul and I were living in our rental apartment together, I said “to heck with it all!” I’m not waiting to own a house before I make this my home. I had no idea how long it would be before we owned a house, but life can’t wait just because of contracts. SO, I cleared it with our landlord and we put up floral wallpaper, pinks walls, and painted murals (remember?! You can see it all here).
Jasper and I have been reading a lot of Aesop’s Fables lately so, the moral of this color-scared story is:
- Do not wait to live life for that “one day” when all your conditions are perfect. Warning: conditions will never be perfect!
- When in doubt, keep on going! You won’t know what a room will look like if you don’t finish it (but I do have some stories of when you need to stop–ha! Did that just negate that point?!)
- The more you experiment, the more comfortable and confident you will become. And paint is one of the cheapest ways to experiment! $40 is worth the risk to see if your life will change (and yes, I contest that color can change your life!).
Tell me. Do you love color? But also terrified of it? Don’t know how to use it? Tell me everything!
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