apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Gray. It can looke soft and velvety (which was my goal when I picked it for my bedroom), or cold and industrial. I had to put a bunch of swatches up before I was satisfied. Finally chose Thunder, a Benjamin Moore AF color. So happy.

A terra-cotta for my kitchen, however, was a complete failure. It ended up a screaming wicked orange, looked like something out of a disturbed Van Gogh painting. I repainted it a bland yellow the next day.

"Red" and "blue" and "grey" and "white"? Uhh, yeah, if you're gonna be that non-specific with the color names, I'd say they'll be pretty freakin' hard to match. Try china red, barn red, brick red, vermilion, crimson, and the like.

Anyway, EVERY color is "hard to get right" if you have something extremely particular in mind. Best bet? Keep a bunch of artists' acrylics around. Mix your own colors, just enough to do a foot-square swatch (or better, a sheet of posterboard), let dry, hang on the wall, repeat until you're happy. Then take your custom-mix to the paint store and have it matched.

I had a very hard time with brown. I wanted something like a camel's hair coat and got baby poop - I finally gave up (three samples) and painted the living room a coffee-with-milk shade.

I usually get it right the first attempt, but only because a friend of mine is a color consultant and is spot on in her selections. I tell her the general color and mood I want, show her the wood, tile or fabric colors that will be in the room and presto, she comes up with the perfect color.

Good professional color consultants may charge about $40 to help pick out the colors, but it saves a lot of aggravation and needless paint purchases that don't leave you happy.

greens. just greens in general. "oh that one looks yellowish and pale" ended up looking like cheap margarita mix.

I have never been able to find a warm, caramel-y tan that's not too yellow or too dirty looking.

For my art, blues are a tough color too. It's really hard to coordinate different blues. All read and all greens pretty much go together. But, you have to be carefully with blues; that don't play well with different blues.

I NEVER GET IT RIGHT. Never. I have resigned to the knowledge that it's either A. hard , or B. I suck at this. I know that my first can of paint will be a total waste. So I only buy a quart. If I in fact do like it, then I buy more. Or spend 8 zillion more hours on this site researching colors.

I tend to like pastels with a bit of gray in them, which almost always works.

Intense colors are much harder, because they change in the light so much.

My rule of thumb for yellows and blues is, steer clear of the section of the color swatches that contain the color you are looking for. For example, if you want a blue, don't look in the blue section look in the gray section and you will likely be much happier. For yellow, stay away from the yellows and look in the beigy section. If not, you run the risk of getting a color that is far more saturated than you wanted.

Your photo reads more "yellow" than orange to me... I would've gone more like http://flickr.com/photos/70191341@N00/3295763793/ for orange. Though you know, I really like the color as-is!

Totally, LilyC. That's true more often than not. I find it awfully helpful to have a Pantone Color Bridge (for those who aren't graphic designers, it's like a 2" thick fan deck of printing ink color swatches). When I'm thinking about new paint colors, I toss it in my bag. Anything I run across that I like on a big surface -- a wall, a big piece of furniture -- I find the closest color match in the deck and make a note of the number, then take the deck along with me to the paint store. It's always a pretty reliable starting point. It's also helpful to have a giant deck of a thousand colors around -- the organization makes it easy to see the steps along the spectrum and with greater/lesser brightness and saturation.

For those of you looking for a camel/caramel color-- I used Island Sand from Ralph Lauren and am very happy with the color. The swatch looks really yellow (I was actually going for dull gold) but on the wall it doesn't look yellow at all.

Ten years ago in my first home I spent weeks trying to get the right neutral taupe. If you take a bunch of taupe swatches and arrange them together they look like a rainbow. I finally found the right one (it leaned ever so slightly toward green) and since then have learned so much more about color theory. I find it easy now to choose colors. Like LilyC, I choose all the colors for my home from the greyish section of swatches. If you choose a saturation level that you like and then choose only hues within that level of saturation, the color palette of your home will click. Having walls and major furniture pieces that are fairly subdued allows for more flexibility with color in art and accessories.

i think greens are hardest. They color shift so much for different types of light. Painted my bedroom one time, at night with the lights on it looked amazing. When daylight hit it, it looked like ooze.

I blame the house. I lived in a 1970s condo that just never looked good, no matter what colour I tried. I painted each room 2 or 3 times in the 5 years I lived there. (I am not exaggerating).

Conversely, any heritage home with miles of thick white trim looks fantastic in ANY shade. Seriously, just pick a colour at random and it looks good. Baby poo. Cafeteria salmon. Ashtray. Moldy oranges. Pitstain. Bruise. All these colours can look really lovely in a room with high ceilings, hardwood floors, white trim, and good light. And I should get a job naming paint colours!

I've pretty much decided every color has the potential to be a disastrous association with something gross, or at the very least, unintentional. I think coffee is a good color, but is it going to be like inside a cardboard box? I am baffled by the insistence that some people have of copying the exact paint brand and color they see in some room online. Not only are there very many shades that are close enough, you're not going to have the same conditions in your room to make THAT COLOR look THE SAME as when you saw it in a room you liked. You're also almost never going to have the stuff you saw that made you like that room with the color in it. A couple days ago, there was an article about that robin's egg blue, which I LOVE, but which has failed me. It can just look so juvenile if you get it wrong.

I've commented about paint color before--I work for Porter Paints and color consult all day--and I have one word: lighting. The very existence of color is a reaction to light; this means that the "taupe" you loved at your friend's house could appear violet at yours. It's great to sample before you commit--but know all your options. It can be wasteful to go through 10 or 12 sample quarts for a single job. Many companies offer sample swatches in 8x10 inch and larger sizes through their websites that can help you narrow your choices down to one or two to eventually sample in paint.

Most colors will intensify over larger areas, and when painted in full rooms (opposite walls reflect light onto each other, magnifying the color). I echo choosing grayer/more muted versions of colors than what you think you want for most applications. You'll be more likely to love the results.

I think the color you're painting over makes a difference as well. I painted my son's rooms a light blue (over the builder's beige) and it just looked dark and gloomy. The same color over white primer on a dresser was just the pale sky I was looking for.

I second the light comment above, I chose a very elegant gray for the walls in my apartment, however at dusk each day the light made the paint look mauve. I was horrified and repainted, this time in white. Although i did have to use two coats of undercoat to stop the gray underneath changing the final colour.

I've also found the paint colours form boutique retailers like Porter Paints are generally much better quality pigment and end up looking far better than the hardware store brands of paint.

tam-tbag, I couldn't agree more. An abundance of white trim can offset any wall color and make it look intentional.

My problem is that I am a sucker for pleasant-sounding paint names--so maybe if they weren't so appealing I wouldn't fall for the wrong colors again and again. I think you should get a job in the paint-naming industry!

Peaches and anything NEAR pink and blues are notoriously hard to get right. Greens are sort of the least troublesome, I find, partly because there are so very many pleasant greens in nature that it's just easier, somehow.

I had the worst time with greens! I recently painted nine sample greens on my bedroom wall that ran a huge gamit - then I went with a beautiful blue I saw here! It made me think a lot about how greens do really change, in my non-expert and extremely inexperienced opinion, more than other colors with the light. I painted my bathroom gray and got it in one - I think the key is accessories, plus it was a tiny space so there wasn't an overabundance of the color to look cold. I think gray in the bathroom is less industrial than sterile white.

I have a "heritage home" with lots of trim and windows on every wall, but normal ceiling height. My problem is that the rooms never really get "bright." There are always some shadows during the day. We have a nice dining room, but do you choose a color for the lovely summer mornings or the cozy winter nights?

I guess one solution would be to find a neutral color and switch out drapes and pillows, but that would be beyond our budget. I'm having to be creative to get one look I'm happy with.

Did anyone else see "Rachel Getting Married"? I loved the house in that. Definitely going to rent it to look at the colors more closely - the green living room was lovely.

Yellow actually -- we were trying to find a creamy/tan/yellow for our bedroom, which doesn't get alot of light. we wanted it to be yellowish during the few hours it gets a lot of sunlight, but kind of a creamy color in lamplight. Unfortunately, it just looks yellow, which is bad because we have a blue kitchen and red parlour, so I fear it looks like an elementary school.

Should have gone with 'morning mist' by B moore!

Don't you think some homes are harder than others to get the right color paint?

When I had large airy rooms with lots of windows in LA any white would work and in my place in San Francisco getting just the right white trim was very hard.

But I think green and grey are the hardest. I tried greens and never found what I was looking for I even mixed a few together and grey is so moody. After several test I did find the perfect grey's one is very deep and the other has green/blue undertones.

My roommate and I recently repainted our living room. We were going for a nice, warm neutral that our landlord would be unlikely to make us repaint. We've since taking to calling the color of our walls "badly beaten Caucasian," which I think says enough.

On the other hand, the walls in my bedroom - a soft purple that leans towards grey - is absolutely lovely and surprisingly mature. You know, for purple.

"badly beaten Caucasian"--hilarious! That's better than "Barbie flesh," which I think is the same color and have made the mistake of using several times.

The turquoise family is tough. We recently did our bathroom in turquoise and had a hard time finding the right color. We did it in semigloss and were going for a bright-yet-pale color that would look nice with walnut pieces (IKEA Molger series) as well as with orange towels and rug, rubber duckies, etc.

Semigloss is hard anyway because the paint chips are flat, but turquoise is just a pain in the ass. If you go too desaturated, it looks pastel (ew), and if you go too green it looks like awful '80s teal (ew), and if you go too blue, then you have a blue room instead of a turquoise one. We decided to err on the side of too bright and too blue, so it would at least be "not quite right, but oh well" instead of "omg this needs repainting now." We ended up happy with it, but it took a lot of hemming and hawing over paint chips.

We've completely given up on choosing our own paint colors. We only get them from from actual homes in magazines that list the actual paint color, or paint chips from pottery barn and restoration hardware. Now we're finally happy with our results!

wow, people have very complicated ways of getting good paint colors! I do what my mom taught me: choose your favorite nail polish color that makes you look and feel great. Then buy several shades in sample pints. Paint big squares on the wall. Cover them up one by one, until you have the winner. It's supposed to be fun, dammit.

I've just painted our bedroom pale blue and even after using my full set of dulux trade paint cards and several sets of sample pots I'm still not convinced its right - this is the only time i've ever had a problem choosing a paint colour.
Its made worse due to the fact that I already have the curtains to go in that room and wanted the walls to coordinate but the curtains are lavender in some lights and an almost yellow/grey blue in other lights - I went the lavender route for the paint.
The lighting is really not helping as the shades on the bedside lamps are white glass and cast a very cold light.
Its not a BAD colour as it is but its not giving me the atmosphere I wanted for the room - still tempted to go over it with a more powder blue colour...

White! Of all the colors, it was picking a white that brought me to the brink of a decorating meltdown. Who knew. There are only about ten million shades of white... Finally got it after four repaints and a little help from a BM color consultant.

I found Ralph Lauren colors to be horrible. I painted both bedrooms in this BEAUTIFUL yellow green called Ocher Yellow. I didn't realize until that night that it turns NEON GREEN at night. It doesn't even matter what type of lighting I bring into the rooms, it's NEON GREEN. This guy at the paint dept of a major retailer told me that they have a lot of metallic in their paint and that RL paints are famous for that problem. So be aware!!!

-living in neon green room-

I wonder how many people use CFL bulbs in the rooms in which they are experiencing bizarre day / night color differences. The problem with fluorescent bulbs is that they don't emit an even range of color (white light is every color in the spectrum). So even though incandescent bulbs tend to be a bit more yellow, they still emit EVERY color in the spectrum because the light is made by heat, like the sun. Conserving energy is great, but sometimes you just have to use good ole incandescent bulbs to create the right mood.

As far as difficult colors… ANY color when you're trying to agree on something with a roommate.

our Behr "Swiss Coffee" looks like arctic white. I feel like I'm living in an igloo.

LilyC - That's excellent advice for nearly any color.

(Unless you're on HGTV's $250,000 Challenge - Then it's a sure-fire way to get eliminated...)

But to answer the question - I believe Yellow is the most difficult color to get right (often too primary/bright) followed by Red (often too blue) - they also require the most coats of paint.

Grey and White are relatively easy.

blue-gray... I've been having a hard time finding a color that isn't too blue, but I definitely don't want gray. The swatch will look perfect, but nothing I put on the walls looks right to me.

The master bedroom in my leased house is the sickest color imaginable. A previous renter painted the walls dark teal, and the property owner painted over them with pinky beige. I don't have the words in my vocabulary to describe the resulting color---except that it looks a bit like the color of melted and stirred Neapolitan ice cream.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the one color that I have had repeated success with: Sherwin Williams "Peace Rose." It is the palest yellow you can imagine and still be yellow. It works as a neutral though, and every color I ever put with it look terrific.

Here is a link to the story of the Peace Rose and a photograph. http://scvrs.homestead.com/Peace.html

SunnyBlue, you could go w/ tam-tbag's name: teal pinky-beige = Pitstain. ta da! And a new color is born.

Seriously, I have never found a color that I liked as is in any tone. I have been looking for a soft, velvety, not-blue gray, a gray that would conjure a feeling of a hillside on a misty morning, but whenever I think I've got it it has blue undertones or pink or whatever. I always end up finding something close then mixing my own colors.

Having spent a small fortune recently on BM sample jars, I can reqport that I am very pleased with

BM AF Croquet - a lovely mid green that has blue gray undertones and takes on those shades in varous light.

BM Kittery Point Green - a nice middle, if not cottagey, green

BM Good Vibrations - soothing yellow, not to much gold and not too bright, IMO

Actually, was not overall overwhelmed by the Affinity samples. While I am a huge fan of Aura, I found the Affinity line to be pretty trixy when it came to choosing, i.e. the appearance on the card vs. fan deck v. wall was constantly changing with blues looking green and greens looking blue.

Also, I always love the look of a light blue/gray, but whenever I try it, I am just reminded of either an insipid office or the inside of a battleship (or at least what I assume the inside of a battleship looks like). Anyone have any suggestions here?

Anyone try the Casbah AF shade? I am eyeing that for the bedroom if I can convince my husband it isn't purple!

make that "Kasbah"...