I’m pretty much a big fan of warm colors.  You already knew that though, right?  The Tuscany color palette has great earth tones, so I wanted to work in that color scheme for our basement.  We want it to be a cozy gathering place, especially for the cold winters we have here.  There is a lot of hibernation time in our neck of the woods. 

Here is the orginal palette that I worked up in Photoshop…and then didn’t look at when I was choosing the paint colors.  Apparently I had a pretty good vision of what I wanted because they match this pretty well.  I think I will print this up and put it somewhere in the main room.  🙂

We got the majority of the paint through Sherwin Williams, and these are the ones I chose and why:

Main room

• Earthen Jug

I really wanted a warm tone on the walls.  The stones in the fireplace have a lot of different colored stones, and the floor is to be a light color.  This is the main components of the color palette, with the stone, floor and an inspiration clock I found at Homegoods:

The cabinets we chose for the wetbar have a red undertone, so they should all go together rather well.

**When I say “we chose” I actually mean “I chose and Brian nodded his head”. 😉

Craft room/Guest room

• Walls – Lemon Chiffon

• Cabinets – Morning Sun

First and foremost this is my creative space.  It needed to have a light and airy color, especially since I will be down here at night a lot.  It should look really nice with that deep brown cork for the floor.  It almost looks like leather up close.  Cork is nice in that it is softer to stand on and is sound dampening. 

This palette is also neutral enough to allow a variety of decorating changes…as the need occurs, of course. 🙂  Hey, it’s my creative space, so I should be allowed to be creative, right??

Bathroom – 

• Panda White

Since we have this and this in the room, it really needed a light color.  There is already so much going on in this space from the stone to the wood that it didn’t need another competing color.  On the color strip for this version of white the opposite end was a deep brown, so it should go well with the vanity cabinet.  I’m hoping that it has a bit of a “spa-like bathroom” feel to it when it is done.

Wine Cellar –

• Walls – Tree Branch

• Ceiling – Meadowlark

A wine cellar is supposed to be dark right?  Like a cave?  Well, these colors definitely fit the bill!  After Brian painted it he noted that both the colors were so similar that we needn’t have gotten both.  Very true, that.  Painting it these colors really closed the room in and made it feel like a true cellar, minus the bugs, of course. 😉

For a true wine cellar with humidity control it was important that we used a mildrew resistant paint and it couldn’t be a matte.  We chose a satin in Sherwin Williams Duration Home paint.  The wine cellar also had to be built with a special type of drywall, insulation and a vapor barrier.  It was the first time our friend, Vern, had built one.  Now he has that experience under his belt! 

We are still waiting for the Malaysian Mahogany wine racks to arrive.  Brian is growing a bit impatient as the temperature of our wine rises now that there is actual heat in our basement.  Soon, hopefully, soon…

Remaining areas (ceilings, hallways, closets and exercise room) –

• Almond Cream by Behr 

This was actually the primer color I picked out in about 2 seconds.  I wanted cream, so this was the nearest Behr cream at The Home Depot.  I know it totally looks like the Panda White above, but it is definitely a darker, more tan color.  We decided to let it hang out as a top coat for the ancillary areas.  It goes along with the other paints, so it works.  Plus, we didn’t want to have to paint another color as it only needed one more coat as opposed to two!

There you have it.  The color palette for our yet-incomplete-but-in-process-basement!

In a hindsight 20/20 kind of way I wish I would have gotten pictures of the kids helping us paint.  As frustrating as it was having them “helping” they were cute in their avid attention to getting as much paint on the floor and their clothes as possible.  *sigh*  But since my hands were also covered in paint I wasn’t about to touch my camera.  😯