Two-Story Walls: To Paint or Not to Paint?

Chances are good that if your home was built over the last fifteen years, you have two story walls taunting you.  The most experienced do-it-yourselfers often shudder at the thought of taking on this type of paint job, and even if you do move forward with the project (or hire a professional painter), do you have enough faith in your color selection to commit to a two-story version of it…especially if you’d end up having to also paint the upstairs’ open areas the same color?

Every home and set of walls is different, but I’m in the middle of a project for a client right now that involved just such a dilemma, and the solution I came up with might help some of you, too.

Rather than painting the full height of the walls, I created a feature wall that combined stripes of the existing beige paint color with cardamom, apple green, and teal:

BEFORE: Boring builder beige.

AFTER: Paint pizzazz!

Integrating stripes of the existing paint color allows us to stop the stripes at normal wall height without an inexplicable “chopped” look.

To unify the rest of the space, I’ve incorporated the cardamom color behind the new media built-ins we just installed, and also on the wall opposite the striped wall:

BEFORE

AFTER

The result gives my clients a customized look that makes their beige walls look like a deliberate part of the design plan, and not just something they were “stuck” with.

What’s next for this space? A new apple green sofa, a tufted ottoman from Iron Thread Design, a new rug and window treatments, and some funky furniture redo’s!