On Painting the Bathroom Pink

At Sherwin-Williams, perusing the pinks. Standing there, with pursed lips, oscillating between Oleander, Loveable, Bella, and Hopeful, before choosing a shade based on the name and inherent symbolism. A quart. Something that is very moisture resistant. Satin sheen, please. The bathroom will be pink. 

In my life, I’ve lived in two pink rooms. Well, nearly. When I was four or five, my grandma came to town to help paint and redecorate our upstairs bedrooms. When asked what color I’d like, I lobbied hard for pink, envisioning a bubble gum-like shade. Pink, and unmistakably so. You’d imagine my dismay when the paint swatch barely hinted of the color. 

When telling the grown-ups that they had picked out a shade of white, I was corrected: it was a creamy pink. Besides, all paint colors dry darker or look different when actually on the wall. Besides, it was a color I could “grow into,” whatever that meant. 

When the light hit just right in the morning, and if I looked long and hard enough, and if I compared the color on the wall to something lighter or more stark, like a piece of copy paper, I could see how the color might be called pink. Mostly, it looked like a bowl of Cream of Wheat. All that lobbying to be told that I got what I wanted. 

I didn’t grow into that color, if you’re wondering. The room was painted blue, then grey, and then finally, a pretty coral pink. Growing up, we switched rooms all the time. Some sister was always hauling her things across the hallway and moving in. But that pink room is remembered as mine, though it had belonged to each of us at one point or another. I didn’t choose the coral color, Lydia had— I just started inhabiting that room after she left for college. Mom had full intention of leaving it as a guest room until I (and my things) slowly pervaded the space. I started doing my homework in there, and then sleeping in there, and then hanging my pictures on the wall, and then putting my books on the shelf. With time, it became mine. Mom didn’t get a guest room. When we had visitors, I would move out and they would stay in Hope’s Room, the room at the top of the stairs, the pink one. 

My first semester in college, mom called to let me know that now, this time for real, she was going to renovate my room into a guest room, kindly warning me that when I came home next, the walls would no longer be pink. Sure enough, the room now wears a neutral color and keeps very few traces of me, save some shoeboxes full of mementos stored under the bed and some winter clothes in the closet. Still, mom calls it “Hope’s Room.” And still, in my mind, it is pink. 

Some people test a color to make sure it looks like the swatch. Paint a patch onto the wall and let it dry. See if it is a true match. But today, when I chose a Sherwin-Williams color based on the name, there was no point in sampling it. It would have to work because I’d committed to the meaning. A whole wall was already painted, and all the corners cut in before I stepped back to assess. Let’s just say, it was different than I’d imagined. Not a powdery blush look. Hopeful Pink is bright, bordering aggressive. Not a shade of pink; Just pink, through and through. It did dry darker than the paint swatch suggested; as if I was going to take any chances and pick a lighter shade! Not after my four-year-old bubble-gum pink dreams had been devastated by that pinkish hue of white. 

I’m not even a pink girl. I doubt many of my friends would attribute the color to my personality, let alone my closet. And yet, no one should be surprised by a pink bathroom— this decision was not impulsive, though seemingly out-of-the-blue, a little random for a weekday afternoon. Maybe it’s a very natural thing for me to enter into a new space and wonder which walls I can paint, choosing a color similar to the one I dreamed of as a kid, one that matches the four walls that held me through high school. 

If you were to ask me what I did this afternoon, I wouldn't tell you that I tried to feel at home in this unfamiliar city, I tried to belong, I tried to recognize myself here. I would tell you that I painted the bathroom. And it is even more pink than I thought it would be.