Closet Doors and Walls Act as Double Agent

So what's one of the easiest ways to let your child put a color in their room you might otherwise completely dismiss?

Work with the closet wall and/or closet doors if possible.  It usually has the smallest space around it, and usually is not the first thing you see from the hallway &/or foyer.

This is my daughter's closet wall.  It works well for stronger colors than I may want guests to see (okay, so maybe not me personally, but for the idea of flow....)from the foyer or hallway because you have to be in the room to see the color.  Her ideal 'look' is to add a plaid pattern to the white area (PPG Fossil).  It is on hold for the moment.  There is enough going on with the Benjamin Moore Shimmering Lime walls and Laura Ashley Taupe #5 wall; part of the negotiation process, with the parent holding the trump card.

Before the change to Gossamer Blue (Ben Moore) doors, we had Arizona Sunset (PPG) to reflect my daugther's creative side (and favorite color of the time frame). She designed the name plate and I painted her room theme colors to her specifications.  She had full design reign on this wall above the closet.

 I try to hold to the "color stays for 5 years" rule, which gets me into high school at this point, but we make changes sooner sometimes, like we did to the current blue closet door color.

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Here is another example of using the closet door wall as the accent wall.  This room was the nursery, toddler, pre-teen and now guest room so the walls and doors have had many colors (mostly Ben Moore colors):

Closet walls have been a pale lavender, stem green, khaki-(Graham's backpack), patriot blue, and cocoa sand.

The other walls have been pale lavender, amethyst purple, backpack, cocoa sand.

Doors have been white, jasper yellow, and now edgecomb gray.  

Negotiations led to a room flip, with this room becoming the guest room, bringing the blue wall back to cocoa sand, and child #1's room becoming a rich ocean color, surf blue.  I posted about the depth of the color compared to the color chip in this past blog.

A closet door wall may not always be the best 'accent' wall. The lighting, length of the wall and window placement in the room play a role to determine a good accent wall.  Ideally you want to accent the wall across from a window.  If you accent a shorter wall it can square up a rectangular room, if you accent a longer wall it may over emphasize the length of the room.

If the walls don't allow for an accent around the doors you could paint the inside of the closet an accent color.

Last month I shared on my ColorRedesign facebook page a great article Houzz posted about kids choosing their space's colors.  Here is the link:  Kids Study Spaces Earn High Marks

Take a chance and share some authority on color selection for your child's room.  It's a great chance to try your creative juices on an easy to fix space. You may be surprised how orange, bright blue, deep purple, lime green or fuchsia look in the space!

Best~
Jill