apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The one time I didn't swatch with paint color, it was pretty bad. We were selling our house and we needed to paint the garage immediately, like we had one weekend day to do the whole thing from paint purchase to finish. I grabbed a strip of likely looking green and picked two greens, one light, one darker. Only once we got it up on the garage, they were just too close to each other. it was supposed to be very pale green trim with dark green siding, but ended up looking like I just painted trim and siding the same color. Oh, well. We got it finished in time.

We recently painted an accent wall (the entire length of the room) in our living room bright orange. No eupemisms for orange-type hues here...it's Giants orange. We are by nature impatient people, so we skipped the swatching, bought the paint, and proceeded to paint the wall...at night. When we woke up the next morning, it was a little shocking and I had a serious ache in the pit of my stomach. By afternoon, I was in love. It was a little reckless, I admit, but totally exciting and completely rewarding! We love it!

Life is too short and would be pretty boring if we knew the outcome of every decision we made. Pick a color and start the adventure!

I love the yellow on the left of the window. It's gorgeous and exactly what I want for my house exterior! Could you tell me what it is?

I've never swatched. I've hummed and hawed over paint chips in the morning, afternoon and night.

Usually I can just feel it. The best impulse paint job was in a house I shared with 5 boys. We painted our living room steel blue and a bright green which was aply named Asparagus. It was awesome and so bright! Just what a house with 5 boys and 1 girl needed.

Oh, and I also painted that bathroom a great turquoise. No one else liked it except me. i thought it was fantastic.

I painted my dresser and nightstand from a paint chip matched to the green leaf on a scrap of fabric from my duvet. But I only needed a quart to finish the entire project, so buying paint to sample seemed silly. It worked out really well, although when the first coat when on I thought I'd made a mistake. Fortunately by the third coat it was as dark as I wanted.

I am an interior designer and I ALWAYS use swatches. Not only does the paint look different from sample to wall, but it is also effected by time of day and position in relation to natural light. Here is a paint primer that many people find to be a huge help:

http://www.mydesignsecrets.com/2008/04/24/paint-primer/

Good luck!
http://www.MyDesignSecrets.com

In a small room, swatches no.

A house exterior? At $45 a gallon, that's a choice too big to repaint if its not quite right.

I swatch, but not on the wall -- on a big piece of primed plywood. Then I can move it around and see how the color looks in different parts of the room, under different light conditions, next to walls of different colors, etc. Saves lots of repainting, if you're picky.

Ditto the plywood; in my case I use a 2'x2' piece of Masonite (off-the-shelf from Home Depot). It's easy to quickly position against trim and ceiling, and move from room to room if need be.

My patient gf painted the bathroom turquoise 3 times because I didn't swatch. But now it's my favorite color in the house.