Good afternoon. Hi everyone. How are you? Quickly coming to say hello once again before school pickup. I was just thinking today of quite an embarrassing thing that I did actually quite early on in my career.
I’ll tell you about that in a second but for those of you who don’t know me, or you probably do maybe know me on here by now but my name is Jane Elyes-Bennett, and I’m the owner of Hotspace Consultants. I’m an interior and exterior designer.
So, anyway, what was the thing that I did that was embarrassing? Well, somebody came and asked me to help with the exterior colours of their home. So, at this point, it was just a paint job and they asked me for a paint colour. These days I do much, much more than a paint colour although that is a very small part of what I do is advising on colours, obviously for exteriors. But anyway, they came to me and said can you give us a colour for the outside of the house? Anyway, there was another house quite near. I think it was next door or two over, and the house was this really nice colour and I think, oh I really like that. Let’s go play a little bit on that and we’ll go a couple of shades lighter.
So, anyway, I go down and get my paint charts out and I select a colour. I show the client. Yep, yep, all good. Anyway, they paint it this colour. Everyone makes mistakes in their lives and that’s how you learn to be really good at what you do, and I, unfortunately, learnt my lesson on this family’s house. Anyway, the painter came along, painted the whole house and then I went to have a look at it and it was almost exactly the same colour as the neighbour. Very, very embarrassing and I had to kind of grin and almost make out like it was intentional. But, I mean it still looked really good but the fact that it was the same colour as the neighbour was such a bad look.
I use colour all the time now and I can see a small chip and I know what it’s gonna look like in big piece, but back then I probably wasn’t as good as what I am now and so choosing my colour from a little piece like this, or even an A4 piece of paper, that was a really difficult thing to choose from. And I see this a lot with people who are renovating for themselves and they go to the paint shop and they get some small samples or they maybe get a test pot and they paint a bit of the wall. And you can get a bit of an idea if you paint a metre or two or three square metres on your wall, but it is a completely different to seeing it on a big wall.
That was really embarrassing for me and probably a bit disappointing for the client. So, anyway, don’t do that. Just be really mindful that the colours you’re choosing are really going to look as you imagine that they’re going to look on the wall.
Another situation I had about, it must have been 2005 and I’d bought an investment property to flip. Anyway, I painted the whole thing on the outside, finished it. It looked really good and ended up selling it and as I was settling, I went back and happened to catch up with the neighbour. It was a subdivided block and there was a house on the back and he said, “Oh I love the colour of your house. I’m going to paint my house the same colour.”
I said, “No, don’t do that.” And I said, “I tell you what, I’ll give you a colour.” So I gave him a colour for free which is, you know, much better than having another house right next door looking exactly the same. So, anyway, I suppose the other, you know, the thing is that there are thousands of colours out there. There are thousands of colour combinations out there and, as you’ve seen on other things that I’ve posted recently, it’s not just about the colour. The colour’s important, but the other things like, you know I’ve done things like add entry porticos and landscaping.
So, my message to you is, just be mindful when you are designing your renovation. If you see anything on the internet and you want to translate that into reality, it might look totally different on your home.
Typically I don’t just do paint colours, if you only want a paint job, I’m not your girl. You probably just need to go to a, you know, colour consultant. I’m all about improving the exterior, the whole exterior of the house, so the paint job is definitely one thing. And what you might not realise is how much impact, you know, those additional things can make and hopefully you’ve had a look at the photos I’ve put on the Facebook page and, I don’t know if you guys have seen my website. I might post a link to the website because there are some really great before and after photos on there.
But, yeah, anyway that’s it from me. Have a great day. Please say hi even after I hang up and enjoy your weekend and I will see you next week.
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