Paint By Numbers

Ever see an episode of (anything) on HGTV where they pick a color, slap it on the wall and it looks great?  Let me tell you, folks:  THEY LIE.  Real life isn't so easy.  Try it and you'll find that 9 out of 10 times the paint doesn't look just like the paint swatch you chose, and then the sun will shift and it will look even MORE different than what it looked like the hour before.  

So recently the hubs and I have agreed to paint our main living areas.  We've been in the house for over three years and since the house was "move in ready", we were able to move right in without having to do (much) work.  But a few months ago, we came home and all of a sudden our walls looked to me like they were a pinky peach color!?  So in passing, I mentioned it and like a bad song that gets stuck in your head, it's all we can think about whenever we are in the living room, dining room, stairway or hallway...pretty much our WHOLE living area now screams the question "Am I peach or am I pink?".  Our response:  "Whatever you are, YO UGLY!".

Obviously, something had to be done.  

We started by picking a palette of grays and swatch-ed them around the space.  Why gray?  Because it wasn't beige.  I wanted a little more style and love the neutral yet edgy look of gray. So the first five stripes on this wall were all shades of gray from Sherwin Williams.  We lived with them striping various walls around the space for a couple of days, and then decided they looked a little to industrial for what we were wanting (and I quote the hubs "it looks like a cinder block prison") so we went back to the drawing board.

Doesn't the wall look peachy-pinky?!  EW.

Here are the colors (all from Sherwin Williams) in order of the first five stripes on the wall.  See what I mean?  They don't look ANYTHING like the swatches on this wall.  Granted, part of it is my camera, your monitor, and so forth, but we stood back and had to do a double take.  

7022 Alpaca

7023 Requisite Gray

6022 Essential Gray

7024 Functional Gray

6001 Grayish

Here are 2 more striped walls to compare with.  I mean, really?  The top & bottom stripes (#1 & #5) look almost white on this wall, don't they?

This wall doesn't get direct sunlight, it's between two windows.

Yes, I'm busted.  That IS an ugly brass doorknob.  We just haven't gotten around to changing them out yet....
But staying on point, THIS wall has all sorts of natural light.

So the next three colors we got are the bottom three stripes:

7037 Balanced Beige
(Yes, it IS the "b" word.)

7044 Amazing Gray

7030 Anew Gray

They ware all starting to look the same so this is how we kept track of the paint stripes:

Back to the basics, folks.  We really are painting by numbers....

We think we've decided on one or maybe even two.  And need to make a decision soon because the painter comes next week.

Which stripe do YOU like?