Signs You Painted a Room the Wrong Color

word. we bought a house a year and a half ago and pretty much ran through the same exact dialog while painting the interior, and then repainting a couple of rooms. You'll be happy when you get it right though.

I don't like how Todd curses so much on this site now. I can't look at it at work anymore.

This was so funny for me to read. I just painted my room about a week ago. It used to be a cool, green/yellow sort of color, and I had picked out a light grayish-blue (more gray than blue), and when it was done being painted, it was BABY BLUE! Ugh! Anyways, it may be the wrong color, but I'm sticking with this excuse: "It'll grow on me." And it has. :)

Having just painted most of a new house, and workign on finishing the rest of it, I'm very sympathetic.

I couldn't belive I was re-priming the kitchen cabinets after discovering the cool sage green I thought I had picked out was, in fact, avacaco green. Perfect. All I'd need is some harvest gold appliances and my kitchen would be perfect.

We returned a lot of paint. This is one of the big advantages of big stores like Home D. = They'll take back their custom mixed colors and give you a new one without any questions.

Finally, I think we have colors that are good for us. We love our house now.

Keep the faith!

Be thankful you don't live where I live. Except for various flavours of white it's almost impossible to buy colour paint in this country. So what you end up doing is buying colour dye and formulating the colour yourself. It has taken me 5 days to paint 3 small rooms in our new old house. Most of this time was spent trying to create the intended colour. And of course to make matters even more fustrating, it appears almost impossible to reproduce the results even though I follow the same recipe.

Todd, I'm planning to paint our house interiors this Summer and this software has been really great to give us a good idea of what to expect.
Just upload a digital image, mask off the wall and you can test out the entire Glidden pallete.
I borrowed it from a friend, but looks like you can get them at home depot.

Both my wife and I are designers and every room we have decorated has taken a minimum of 16 paint swatches before we could decide on colour choices, including an hour long discussion in front of the decorator.

One paint job - in our bedroom - was so disturbing we couldn't sleep properly. Once repainted all was well!

The bedroom was butter yellow. I painted it a deep dark cranberry. Without priming. 7 coats later it still doesn't look finished. Ah well, we're moving next year!

Our kitchen was horrible - wallpapered in something that resembled drawer liner, dead white with a repeat print of little black tulips, with alternating yellow and orange petals. It was like being in prison (um, without all the nasty Oz stuff). My roommate and I turned to each other, screamed, and hit Reno-Depot.

It turned out nicely - French - er - Freedom Blue cabinets, sea foam green backsplash walls, and a deep "Fox Glow" orange corner for the dining nook. We found silver CD labels at a computer superstore, took out the 2" center 'donut holes' and stuck them in little square groups of 4 on each cabinet door. We also revamped all the cabinets and drawers with 12" long satin-aluminum-ish bar handles from Ikea. Add some vintage Danish teak and you're done! We picked those colours mostly because they went together; oddly enough they turned out the be the Trendy Colours that year and now we have matching dishware (also Ikea) - I swear we didn't plan it.

Our new house isn't built yet - since it's going to be much smaller than our current 1910 rental duplex, we're going for a natural-materials palette (whites, slate tiles, glass, coir rugs, bamboo etc.) - with one spot of intense colour, a tangerine-orange sofa against a 40-50% grey wall - I'm hoping to use slate tiles or something with a similar texture for the wall.

Hey Paul - great tip on the Glidden CD-ROM. Scary thing is, something like that wouldn't be too terribly hard to create in Flash MX. Only limitation is time, really. :)

Am I the only one who is desperate to see this 'wrong' color?

Nope, I wanna see it too.

Upstairs Bathroom: 4 coats of different shades of blue.

Ben's Room: 3 coats of different shades of green, not counting the primer.

Office: 8 coats (including one red primer, and then later, one blue primer) 4 coats of red - then changing mind and putting on 2 coats of a nice scandinavian dusty blue.

I am DONE painting.

But I am happy with the rooms...

Man, I have sooooo been there!

My Girlfriend and I painted our bathroom...we were thinking, blue...and thats ALL we were thinking. We both failed to notice the ochre bath, toilet and sink. I even went as far as to get out my Pantone swatches to find the colour we wanted. And amazingly, and despite my last comment, compared them to our bathroom items and still thought it was OK. We were as keen as mustard on blue....hell be damned. We went for it.

When the first coat come up we wretched. Luckily we had enough time to get down to homebase (I live in the UK, sort of like home depot I gather) and get some new paint.

In the end, the colour we chose (and if I can be so wanky) was a more "contemporary" version of what was already there in the first place. Always, and despite your enthusiasm, you really have to make yourself take stock of what you are doing.

Our latest paint job, the bedroom..went without a hitch...I guess you learn after the first time.

The only way is up!