Ocean colours, earth tone and balance

Colours, ideas and budget all becomes part of any remodeling/redecorating projects. I often check out the new schemes offered by various decorators just to see what is offered these days...Yes, just dreaming...

I like colours which reminds me of the ocean...light, airy and a part of my Nordic upbringing I suppose.
At the opposite, my (very British) husband leans towards the earth, natural colours. When thinking of his taste, I always visualize cozy rooms, endless book shelves, red walls with English country scenes, a few brass ornaments, well worn chintz covered armchairs occupied by the family cat and the smell of leather accessories...

In fact along the years as we moved, we always seemed to decorate our living room in such a fashion although we only recently added a cat to our little family!

Moving to the island we found our new home's interior walls painted white, with wall to wall light beige carpeting...The exterior was an ugly beige yellow with green trimmings, the first to go albeit it took 3 years to convince my family! It is now in different shades of blue with white trim.

It took 4 years to paint our (brown) kitchen cabinets the colour of the sky, our bathroom a warm aqua and our bedroom a lovely shade of lavender.
All this meant patience and careful consideration but the results was well worth waiting for! Our budget only called for a fresh coat of paint but how refreshing!

So this year I came back from overseas with a treasure of white sheers from the haberdashery and patiently anticipated the next phase in my ever dream scheme: painting our living room/dining room area.
Deciding on the perfect colour was easy: a neighbour and close friend was redecorating his bedroom and came up with a sample we could both agree on: we chose Antique copper.
And with three quarter of a gallon later we thought we would go ahead and start on the hallway...
I discovered Blue Cloud, a colour I can live with for the vestibule and trim and voila!

With the raining season here soon to be followed by winter, it remains for us to decide on a pattern for curtains and perhaps a few accessories such as pillows for the living room and even a new chandelier for our dining room.

I came to the conclusion ocean colours compliments earth tone wonderfully thus allowing both of us to have our ways yet feel comfortable in our home even after 35 years of marriage. Compromise, such a little thing and yet not always easy to balance.

As to the finished product, well we still have a few pictures to hang and decide how many bookshelves we will share, the best place to put the cat tree, our corgi's basket...Continuity, another vital ingredient in the balance.