Paint Colour - Does it Really Matter?

Could I get divorced over choosing a paint colour?


It must be a question as old as time itself.  Men and women decorating their surroundings, each with a different idea of what colour really means. Neither of them with an idea of what they really want.  And each time the other one talks it chips away another layer of confidence in their choice until they finally get so scared they circle the wagons around a final choice and go for a duel.

El Castillo Cave paintings in Spain from 40,000 years ago have recently been discovered by some nutty spelunkers; underground adventure seekers that like the feeling of difficult tight spaces, darkness, cold, wet and the smell of mould. They've come upon these new specimens, proving to the world our ancestors had artistic talent well before we had been thinking previously.  It shocked and temporarily destabilised the global community.  I know I completely changed the way I look at every day with this new discovery.  Here I was, staring at my kids macaroni art thinking the earliest cave paintings may have been 10,000 years ago and I was 4x wrong.

Only recently have I been able to piece my life back together to ask the real question.  Who decided to use red?  There was more then one person involved with all the handprints on the walls.  Surely there was a discussion at some point in that cave that maybe a burnt sienna or orange peel is better then red.  Why is it always red? Its not even the right colour for the animal anyway.

Then I paused and restudied the image to discover the horrific truth that apparently someone's head was clearly bashed senseless against the rock wall.  Its the only explanation for why this artist coloured outside of the lines.

Colour selection has disturbed us so significantly as a culture you can now hire a professional colorist to do it for you.  A person trained solely in the selection of colours for walls, floors, ceilings and furniture.  Not the actual furniture, just the colour palette for the someone to then go and buy furniture from.  This by far rates as one of those number one jobs nobody wishes upon the worst enemy. To be employed to just help select colours for someone's home, someone who has enough money to employ a professional colourist, must be the next easiest thing to deciding their child's name.  I'm not suggesting these professionals are insane, I'm simply saying what they do is.

When it comes to decision making there's no better place for more choice then colours.  Painting companies are to blame for most of this problem.  The rest of the blame is left to the promiscuous primary colours of red, blue and yellow.  Paint companies a long time ago decided that names of colours are just as important as the actual saturation and hue itself.  Who wouldn't want 'Yani's Gold' instead of brown or 'Green Isle' in lieu of green painted on their walls?  Crazy people probably.  Its simple, catchy names sell paint.  Then we, as consumers, have something to engross ourselves in at our dining tables in the evening.  The best part is once you're done not deciding with one catalogue of trendy, traditional and neutral colour schemes you can pick up the next manufacturers special blend and pretend all their different paint names represent new colours you had never seen before.  This cornucopia of fun can go on for hours, typically ending when every colour looks the same.

Its generally at this point you start making bold statements to your partner about which colours look best.  Having no idea they've sacrificed a similar duration of their life doing the same.  Only to find out they picked completely different colours.  In fact, not only did they pick them out, they went down to the store, bought the samples and physically painted them on to the wall while you had your nose buried between Sea Lavender and Forest Steel.  Those bold statements are immediately received as threats to your partner's existence and begin the unravelling of your marital moral fibre.  The next 30 minutes of structured insults are nothing to be proud of, in fact 'shame' is probably the best way to describe how your children now think of their parents.  Not to mention its been clinically proven that each spouse will of course return to talking terms no longer sure of the colour they had just staked their relationship on.

Eventually a colour is chosen.  You'll love it or hate it, but its only paint.  And if you're like the 98% of the population out there its probably the most neutral safe tone you vowed to avoid from the outset.  If only you had sold out earlier you could have spent more time focusing on the fucking painters quote in the first place.