Master Bedroom Mini Makeover — The Before

This post is brought to you by Valspar paint.

Four years ago, when we moved into our home, I painted our room gray. I picked out the seemingly perfect paint that I saw in a friend’s home and voila, done. Except one thing: My room gets so bright that nearly all the time you can’t tell it’s gray. It just looks like a blah white. The photos make it look a shade more gray that it does in real life, but it shouldn’t get this much credit. Immediate lesson learned: Test your paint colors on a few walls and look at it at day and night.

Now that I’m ready to repaint our room (and our daughter’s), I’m hyper aware of what we’re putting in this house. We painted our kitchen cabinets a few years ago right after our son was born, and whoa—we couldn’t even keep him in the house the fumes were so bad. Valspar recently introduced a comprehensive line of paints that emit zero volatile organic compounds (VOC), which are chemicals that impact indoor air quality. I’m always seeking safer, better options, so I headed to Lowe’s, where the line of Valspar Zero VOC* paint is sold exclusively, to find gray paint colors to test.

Want to know more about VOCs? Just as I’m educating myself about ways to remove or minimize harsh chemicals in our beauty and skincare routines, I’m striving to do the same in our home, so I was personally interested to learn more about it.

Turns out, they’re in so many products many of us use daily. VOCs are consistently higher indoors than outdoors due to their presence in household items including cleaning products, adhesives, cosmetics and disinfectants, as well as many paint products. Now, thanks to advances in technology, Valspar’s low and zero VOC* water-based paints have maintained or improved performance while reducing VOCs in the products to minimal or trace levels. I selected the Valspar Signature because of its scuff-shield technology that will stand up to anything (like two little ones who practically bounce off the walls!), and it also is fade resistant, an important factor since our room gets so much light each day.

Now here’s the more nerdy science part worth knowing as you compare other products: *Valspar’s Zero VOC products contain 0 g/l VOCs as calculated within the margin of error by EPA Method 24, the analytical method recognized by the U.S. EPA for the measurement of VOCs in paints and coatings.

Visit your local Lowe’s to find a color you’ll love.

OK, slightly embarrassing but here’s the honest truth of my bedroom “before” photos. Taken with my iPhone, it’s like the “before” photos you see before beauty makeovers. My husband hasn’t even put away the boxes from his new shoes, he has an alarm clock from—no joke—1993, and I have arts and crafts projects from my daughter piled up next to my side of the bed. Excited to put a much prettier gray on these walls ASAP. (Stay tuned for the reveal, and follow on Snapchat, alyson.seligman, as we paint!)

Valspar helps you Breathe Easy

Photography: South Moon Photography