Choosing a Paint Color – My Choices and why I still Love them

I know everyone says its the, “Easiest thing to change!” and, “You can always paint over it!” Well, just because its easier than tearing down a wall doesn’t mean you want to keep repainting a room over and over again. Ideally you manage to pick the right paint color the first time but choosing a paint color off of a swatch is basically impossible. I never would have chosen our paint colors just from their swatches. Painting a room WELL takes time, generally at least a couple of coats and a lot of taping and prep.

All brushes and rollers leave marks no matter what. The only way to combat it with a roller is to always have plenty of paint on your roller that you never have to PUSH on the wall.

And then to roll right over yourself many many times.

Different angles, different times of the day, different lighting, has always disappointed to show me just how much I missed on the first pass lol.

Of course paint quality makes a huge difference on how well it covers. I won’t name names but I’m just going to say (with much wasted money through trial and error) that I won’t use any brand besides Royal by Ace. Amazingly its also on the low price range too.

Almost all of the colors we ended up with here are by Valspar though that wasn’t deliberate, I guess they just “get” us.

One thing this post is going to prove is that paints do not look at all like their swatches after they get on the wall lol. Environment, lighting, windows, the color of the floors, furniture, furnishings, window treatments, ceilings and trim colors – it all makes a HUGE difference on how wall paint colors end up looking.

I was wrong the first time every time I chose a color from a swatch.

(And generally the second or third try as well…)

Thank goodness for paint samples!

My favorite color in the house is in our master bedroom and master bathroom and closet. Its called Sooty Lashes by Valspar.

The swatch leaves me totally at a loss. Doesn’t that look completely gray? But (at least to me anyway) I love how blue it looks upstairs. Its moody and dreamy, perfect for a place of rest.

My second favorite is Fait Accompli (also by Valspar) in the entryway.

The swatch of Fait Accompli looks practically black on the swatch but oh my gosh does it have depth in our entryway. It POPs in greens and blues and grays. Its complicated and just about everyone has a different opinion of its actual color.

It was also the paint color that took me the longest to pick out.

I had several swatches above a window in my entryway for WEEKS staring at them everyday, trying to figure it out. One of the swatches was a color I loved but I didn’t love it for the entryway at all.

But I didn’t forget it!

The color was called Flannel Gray also by Valspar and it made a lovely change for our guest bedroom.

All three of those colors look so incredibly gray and yet, to me anyway, they all have a ton of blue in them which I love!

Finally, the last paint color here I’m going to mention is also the only color in the house that isn’t Valspar. Our living room color is Rise and Shine by Clark and Kensington and I’m mentioning because initially I was REALLY on the fence about it.

I struggled really hard finding the right color for the living room as its open to our kitchen and entryway and you see it right when you walk in the house.

I wanted something yellow but not big bird. Creamy but not orange. Light but not boring. Buttery but not the actual color of butter… catch my drift?

I am not a beige or yellow person obviously I’m a gray and blue person!

I hated EVERYTHING that I looked at and sampled and I had MANY swatches taped to the wall for a while… But not for near as long as the entryway. It was pretty obvious to me that I probably wasn’t going to really actually like anything so I needed to just pick one.

So, why did I insist on a yellow paint color if I didn’t even like it?

Because the house told me to.

And, no, I cant give any further insight or reasoning beyond that. The living room needed to be yellow – it was perfect beside the white and red kitchen and the best compliment to our Fait Accompli entryway.

I did the best I could with my choice and just got the room painted.

At first I was like, “Oh my god… big bird… what have I done…”

It was my Mom who saved it for me (yellow just so happens to be her favorite color) when she first saw it she gasped and said, “Its a ’40s kitchen yellow honey! Its perfect!”

She was right. The house was right. I think its perfect too. And with all the furnishings back in the room I don’t think people even look at it and think yellow at all – that’s just how well it fits in here.

I was given a lot of looks of horror when I first started painting such bold colors but, if you notice, we don’t have a lot of wall space lol. In fact I had trouble (especially with the upstairs master) even finding pictures that supplied enough wall space to really actually show the paint color for this post!

In the end we are still happy with all of our paint choices!