Design with your hubby in mind

Hopefully I’m not the only one with this problem. I love design and I love color and I also love my husband who does not love design or color as much as I do. I have always wanted our house to feel like “us” and reflect our personalities and who we are. The problem is combining our styles together to fit who we are together. I’ll be honest, if I had my way I would live in a house with orange stripe walls and bright upholstered furniture. Like this…

That would probably give Cody a heart attack.

Further proof of this would be how I painted my bedrooms when I was younger. First house was bright yellow and white stripe wallpaper. Second house was bright blue walls with daisies stenciled all over the walls, third house was orange and red plaid walls, obviously this was all done very tastefully.  This was kind of a big deal in our house when I was a kid because my Dad’s middle name should be beige, so for him to be ok with all that was a pretty accomplished fete. And I foolishly thought that when Cody and bought our first house it would be just as full of color as my childhood bedrooms were. I have since realized that it’s about compromise and finding something that we both like. Sometimes I take a long time deciding what I want to do in a room. This would be the case for our hallway. It basically runs the length of our house so it’s really long and I have felt recently like it is to blah. I thought painting it a neutral gray would be the best option since it opens up to almost every room in our home. So I decided I need to treat the hallway more like an actual “room” and I wanted more color but in a more subtle to me kind of way. I found this image online of some wallpaper that I loved.

I knew wallpaper was not an option since we have spent weeks taking it off in every room of our home. So I went another route. I found a place online that makes custom stencils, and I thought I could stencil this in the hallway. But thinking this could still be too much for Cody I thought I would install board and batten on the bottom half all the way around. Like this…

I finally felt really good about how the hallway was going to look and I was really excited to tell Cody my plan and get that stencil ordered. His reaction? Absolutely not. I’m pretty sure his words were “I do not like that pattern at all; I wouldn’t even want it on a pillow.” 

WHAT??? As my vision of our hallway crashed down I tried my best to convince him about it…I even tried “But honey I don’t like camouflage and I let you use that downstairs.” No dice. After I thought about it, I don’t want Cody living in a house that he doesn’t like and makes him think of Grandma's Curtains as he put it. So on to our new plan for hallway. Were still keeping the board and batten idea and maybe painting the top half a darker color.

Am I the only one with this problem when it comes to design? My Mom has managed to help my Dad with his beige addiction….except she would do it when he was out of town….which maybe I should try that tactic with my Grandma stencil?