Zubin’s game room, from builder white to deep gray
A white room turned into a dark, quiet game room in one day: the walls and the vaulted ceiling all in one deep gray, Sherwin-Williams Before the Storm, with the baseboards and doors left crisp white. The part worth a close look is where the gray meets the white.
Zubin wanted his game room dark. The room started the way most do, builder white from the carpet to the top of a vaulted ceiling. The job started with the color book and a page of deep grays, and the pick was Sherwin-Williams Before the Storm for everything: every wall and the whole ceiling in one color, with the baseboards and doors staying white.
Dark paint over white is the least forgiving paint job there is. Every wobble along the baseboard, every spot of gray on a white casing, every thin patch in the finish shows from across the room. So the prep took as long as the painting. We covered the carpet wall to wall in plastic, pulled every cover plate and taped over the outlets and switches behind them, and taped off the baseboards and door casings so the line where the colors meet would come out dead straight around the whole room. We did not repaint the trim. It only had to stay clean.
The clips on this page run the camera slowly along the bottom of the walls on purpose. That line where deep gray meets white baseboard, straight and unbroken around the whole room, is the part of a paint job you are actually paying for. Anyone can roll the middle of a wall.
It was a one-day job, start to finish. By that evening the tape and plastic were up, the plates were back on, and the room looked like it had been built that color. One color on a vaulted ceiling does something a flat white lid cannot: the angles catch the light differently, so the same gray reads lighter and darker as it moves across the room.
Scope of work
- Color selection: Sherwin-Williams Before the Storm
- Carpet fully covered in plastic
- Baseboards and door casings taped off for the cut line, not repainted
- Cover plates removed, outlets and switches taped over
- Walls and vaulted ceiling painted the same deep gray
- Clean cut lines at baseboards, casings and ceiling
- Plates back on and full cleanup the same day
Service: Interior Painting
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