Josh and I seem to have the WORST trouble picking out colors that do not come from Restoration Hardware. Set at sea in a bevy of choices at Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore, Home Depot, or Lowe's, I come home with swatches upon swatches hoping that one will do the trick. When we first moved into our beautiful home, we painted 3 of the rooms right away: master bedroom (Celery), upstairs bathroom (Buttercream), and the office. The office was supposed to be this gorgeous tiffany blue, very subtle and amazing -- well, RH doesn't have a subtle and amazing tiffany blue, so I was left on my own. I chose, Josh bought, we painted. Some of you may remember what I referred to as our pool room. The room actually GLOWED! into the hallway, it was soo blue! The effect was that you were entering an indoor pool, without any water in it. Well, we quickly repainted with the more sedate Sage.
Fast forward to the present. When faced with the choice of what color to paint little Kate's room, once again, RH did not have the perfect option, so I was left to my own devices. I chose a color that SOUNDS demure (Harbor Fog), but when painted above white bead board lost all fogginess and became more harbor. Fortunately, the mistake was not as grave as last time, but it did give Josh and myself NIGHTMARES about our last painting faux pas. One complication was that we were looking at it in the flourescent light of one of Josh's work lights. Once we got the regular bulbs in there and a little sunshine, things looked up. Then, last night, Josh added a little more white to the color before he put on the second coat. The color is more muted, and I know that things will be different when we get all of the furniture, bedding, and curtains inside. I feared that we had another Pool Room on our hands, but we teetered back to the safety of a bright, but not TOO bright, blue. Why, oh why, does not RH have a line of blues that are perfect for MY needs???
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We've painted every room in our house except the living room and the closets. Every time we've painted a room I've freaked out that the color was completely wrong but after a few days I come to like it. I don't know if it's that the change in color is a complete shock to my system or what. I think all of our colors have come from Home Depot - we don't have a restoration hardware in our area but I have heard good things about the color.
Just for fun here's a rundown of the colors in my house:
Entryway - Chianti (A deep red with blueish undertones)
Living Room - Porcini Mushroom (netrual peachy beige - the only room in the house with a color we liked when we bought the house.)
Kitchen and Dining area - Grasshopper Wing (green with grey undertones)
Master - Mocha Accent (this one is hard to describe - it's kind of a green, grey, brown. Sounds gross in concept but is very pretty and relaxing)
Master Bath - I can't remember this color but it's a very pale green that coordinates with the master color. It almost looks white and makes the bathroom feel very spa like
Hallway - Porcini Mushroom
Guest Bedroom - Another color I can't remember but I was going for a light robin's egg blue I saw at the southern living home show house. It came out much brighter and is my take on a "pool room". This will eventually be the nursery and the color will work well for either a boy or a girl. I plan to put up bead board on the bottom to cut the intensity of it.
Office - Windsor Haze - This was Graham's choice and at first I didn't like it but it came out very nice. It's a pretty dark greyish blue.
Guest Bath - Yet another color I can't remember but it's a burnt orange.
I think I need to take pictures....
In the 4 years that we have lived at our house we have painted all but 1 room and 3 of the rooms have been painted twice.
The first color we picked out for our bedroom was this horrible light green which we lived with for a few years and now it is a much darker green and looks much better. Our bathroom is a deep purple but the first time we painted it it was a light lavendar and Jack said he could not live with it-it was horrible. Our kitchen was painted when we painted the living room a brown color but later I painted it with blue and yellow. Jack tends to look at colors and want to go lighter then what I tell him and then we end up re-painting with the original color I picked out.
I've never looked at the paint colors from RH but another great place to get some colors is the Pottery Barn catalogues. They use Benjamin Moore paint and include a "color card page" with all the colors and names listed. (I'm sure you already know this:) But it's where I've begun resorting to. I'm sure Kate's room will look beautiful once it's all together!
I must say Julie is the queen of picking out great colors. She's helped me quite a bit with my colors and she did a fantastic job picking out colors for my parents house.
I was aware that Benjamin Moore carried Pottery Barn colors, but I was misled by the B.M. website. Finally, I saw on the Pottery Barn website a link called Stylehouse which explicitly lists their collection of colors. I think that the Stylehouse section is a new link on both the PBKids and regular PB websites. The thing I like about these limited collections is that they have a freshness combined with depth. The fact that they are selective is meaningful; not every color was meant to be put on a wall.
I just recently discovered PB paints, and I am in love. Also Liz, did you know that you can buy a paint fan from RH and it has lots of colors I never knew they had? You may already be privy to this, but I just thought I'd share.
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