Dresser Paint Color Options – Addicted 2 Decorating®

These are all Behr colors from Home Depot. The colors on the left, top to bottom, are Rococo Beige, Sandstorm, and Sandstone Cliff. The colors on the right, top to bottom, are Casual Khaki, Studio Clay, and Pure Earth.

Since I don’t have the recliner yet, I stacked some boxes in the corner and draped the drapery fabric over them. This fabric isn’t exactly the same color as the chair fabric, but it’s close enough. And then I stood back and looked.

I’ll be honest. I have such a hard time with neutrals. I’m trying to imagine that entire dresser painted in one of those colors and sitting against white wainscoting, and none of them do anything for me.

I tried to get a couple of wider views from each direction so that you could see everything together.

The only one that I could even kind of, sort of imagine on the entire dresser is the darkest one, bottom right, Pure Earth. I like it because it would at least give some contrast with the wainscoting. But at the same time, I think it blends with the floor a little too much.

I don’t know why I have such a hard time with neutrals on furniture and cabinets. Neutral paint colors on wood furniture and cabinets are just not my thing. I can admire them in other people’s homes, but I almost never like them in my home.

So I don’t know what to do here. Should I try the darkest one? It would just take a couple of hours to paint the whole thing. Maybe I’ll be surprised and I’ll actually love it when the whole thing is painted. I tend to doubt it, but there’s always a possibility.

Or should I do something more colorful, even if it does make the dresser more of a focal point? I know I said I wanted to keep the focus all on the headboard wall, but if that means painting a rather larger piece of furniture in a color that feels like it’s sucking the life right out of me, I might have to go a different direction with the dresser.

I really don’t know what to do here. I know that not everything needs to be a focal point in a room. I get that. But at the same time, what do you do when you’re just simply not a “neutral” kind of person? I wouldn’t want to introduce another color into the room on such a big, dominant piece. And the room already has more than enough teal. So that literally leaves one option — orange/coral. I KNOW! I’ve really painted myself into a corner with this one, right?

I think I’m going to have to try it, though. I may end up with a neutral dresser painted in Pure Earth, but I’ll regret it if I don’t at least try a few orange/coral paint colors first. I just have to see with my own eyes if it would work.

UPDATE: I tried to do a couple of mockups of the dresser in two different corals plus a green from the bird fabric. These aren’t great, but they’ll at least give us an idea of what each might look like.

Here’s the lighter coral color. I pulled this color from the area rug…

Here’s the darker one, which is just more orange and less coral. I also pulled this from the most saturated coral/orange in the rug. I think this might be a bit overpowering.

And then I decided to try a green that I pulled from the bird fabric. Keep in mind that there’s no green in the area rug, so as of right now, the only green in the room is in the bird fabric.