Whether you live in a 5,000-square-foot home with brand-new furniture or a three-bedroom ranch with old furniture, homes are how we meet our needs for safety, peace, and ease. It's where we eat, sleep, feed, and nurture ourselves, our families, and our relationships. Each room has a physical as well as an emotional purpose.

Bedrooms are rooms that hold secrets. That's where you often find odd pieces of color in art or fabrics tucked away — colors that mattered at some point. Usually, these colors are colors that people are still in love with but no longer fit in with the other colors they now have. 

Physically, bedrooms are where we sleep. Emotionally, it's where we spend a lot of sleepless nights in the dark with ourselves dreaming, trying to solve problems, rehashing the past, or worrying about the future. A lot of people lose sleep over choosing the right paint colors.

I always tell people in bedrooms you have to go for emotion, not function. You can't go for a Walter.

Whenever I watch Sleepless in Seattle, I'm constantly reminded that the character Meg Ryan was going to marry was neutral, a color that incited no emotion whatsoever to her. Here she was playing it safe, not knowing that Walter the neutral would have eventually surprised her in a big way. He would quietly clash with her enough to drive her insane. Luckily she escaped this fate. For someone else he would have been just fine!

Sleepless in Seattle is a movie about magic and our relationship to specific colors (as in our attraction, chemistry, and connection) is magical. 

It's ok to assign specific colors for the job of being strictly functional. Choosing dark bedding because the dog lies on the bed is smart. Your wall color, not so much. If you spend your free time thinking about paint colors for your bedroom walls and can't find the right one, you are not looking for a neutral; you are looking for emotion.

Having people explain their feelings about their possessions tells a lot about how they think about their lives. Regardless of what they say, I always bring to light the one trustworthy resource they have in front of them to make their home what they want it to be. Color. Color is what turns their life inventory into absolute, pure, unadulterated pleasure. If you look at your belongings as beautiful and purposeful, you accomplish two things, a reason for them to be part of your life and a reason to love them. You can think of them without apologies, regrets, needs, or wants — just beauty.

Look for colors you have always loved so much that you couldn't part with smaller items in those shades. Therefore you hung onto them as new waves of incoming color trends washed over them. 

Sweet dreams!

Yours,

G


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