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Thanks for your excitement last week about the new space I’m working on. I’m really excited to help my brother and his girlfriend (Ryan & Sarah) create a cozy and cohesive guest bedroom in their gorgeous condo. The first task on our makeover to-do list…paint!
Early on, Sarah told me that she wanted to go BOLD with this room and that got me extra excited. Since I’m out of rooms to decorate in my own home (still on the hunt for our dream home), going bold in their guest room sounded like an amazing plan. We chatted about various wall colors and decided to try a dark green paint color. We discussed doing dark charcoal or navy, but ultimately dark green prevailed. Yay!
I’m a big fan of dark green because I think it can be a great base for neutrals. I adore the dark green pillows in my bedroom and they pair well with the grays and whites in the rest of my space. I’ve never painted a room dark green before, but I think those same principles work even on the walls.
Choosing the Perfect Dark Green Paint Color
We’ve discussed paint colors at length here on the blog, but the bottom line is choosing the perfect color is tough! There are a million colors to choose from and you never know how a particular shade will look in your exact space. If you need help narrowing down the perfect paint color, this post has tons of tips to help with that.
For this space, I asked you guys for your favorite dark green paint colors on Insta Stories and made a big list of those. I also flipped through my swatches and found some of my favorites. We knew we wanted a really dark green, so I eliminated any that were too light. We also didn’t want it to be too blue or too gray. Slowly, but surely, my list got smaller and smaller…
The Contenders
Here are the five paint colors I landed on to get samples for their walls.
- Benjamin Moore – Essex Green
- Benjamin Moore – Salamander
- Benjamin Moore – Hunter Green
- Behr – Black Evergreen
- Benjamin Moore – Forest Green
I fully planned to take pictures of the samples up on their walls, but we ran into a little snafu. My brother, Ryan, generously offered to pick up the samples from the hardware store. He hasn’t ever bought paint samples before, so he ran into a few problems. The employee looked at his colors and asked if he meant “Forrester Green“, instead of “Forest Green” and he went along with her recommendation. Eek. Turns out Forrester Green was a heck of a lot lighter than Forest Green. The color “Salamander” also turned out more like Kermit the Frog green than the deep moody color it truly is. Not sure what happened with that one. He does get an A for effort though!
At the end of this paint shopping spree, we were left to choose between Essex Green, Hunter Green, and Evergreen. After checking them out on the wall, we ultimately went with…
The Winner – Essex Green
Benjamin Moore, Essex Green (second in the photo above). 
Well, this paint color upped the coziness factor by like 10000x!!! This huge room now feels so much comfier and we haven’t even changed anything else! Just wait until we have curtains, pillows, new furniture, etc. It’s going to feel completely different!
The dark green makes the white molding and doors pop! And when you have such high-quality and “meaty” molding, you should show it off! 
This dark green paint color is perfection and I’m so happy we went bold with the color. It isn’t overly green and the room still feels spacious even with the deep color. I know dark paint can be scary for a lot of people, but a guest room is a perfect place to try it out. I’m so happy my guest room is a dark navy and I get so many compliments on it. I know this room will be the same for them.
What’s Next? 
I didn’t really want to make too many design decisions without having the wall color figured out. Now that we’re all set on that end, we’re diving right in! I ended up ordering a few samples for curtains from the new-to-me company Alva, and so far I’m really impressed. Our plan is to do a full wall of curtains on the window wall, with a brass curtain rod up top. I’ll be sure to share the full curtain experience with ordering and hanging the next time we chat about this guest room. 
Here’s the rendering of the space with a few more tweaks. We ordered these nightstands (they’re stunners!), these lamps, and this rug from McGee + Co. Loving those new additions so far. I want to find a piece of long horizontal art for over the bed, some pillows, and then we still have to focus on the other side of the room!
But let’s take a quick look at the real-life progress so far…
So far, so good! Now, I want to go hop in that white bed and take a nap surrounded by that gorgeous deep shade of green…
Casey
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