Don't feel foolish! Color is hard to get right which is why there are Color Consultants. I can't tell you how many rooms we have had repainted. My dh says that we are actually losing square footage because of repainting! I have been in the process of picking kitchen paint for about 6 months now while waiting to have my cabinets refinished Truly, I haven't found a color that I love at ALL times of the day but have narrowed it down I think.

Don't be hard on yourself. There are many of us who struggle with paint!

Yes. We painted our whole home ourselves when we moved in, and I picked some colors that I really liked, and others that were a mistake. After a month of painting, the time and expense of doing it again was too daunting, so we've lived with them.

I like the color we picked for our bedroom (a shade of gray), but it doesn't look quite right with our sage green bedding. I guess I got the light or undertone or something wrong - at the time, I didn't put nearly as much thought into choosing my paint colors as I am now, and I didn't even do a test swatch! I never re-did it since I liked the color and it's not a public space, but my vision for that bedroom never came together in 8 years of living in this house...I eventually just gave up on it.

Our family room is the ground walk-out floor of our townhome, and half the room gets decent light during the day, while the other half is dark. We wanted a buttercream color for this room. Sometimes I think it looks ok (mostly when it's getting natural light), but other times it's too orangey for my taste.

We're moving in a couple weeks to a much larger single-family home, and there's a lot of paint choices to be made. I have some ideas but am very scared that I'll make the same mistake you did. I want to LOVE my paint choices this time, especially the one in the main living area. I've learned my lesson and will do test swatches this time, but I'm still really scared . Especially with all this talk about the quality of the light, etc because I feel I don't fully grasp those concepts and know how to work with them. We'll be investing in professional painters this time too, so I feel like even more is at stake.

If you can afford it and think you can fix the problem, I say go for it. But my fear and concern would be making a similar mistake again! If you did test boards and moved them around and that still wasn't enough, what is the trick to getting it right? Hopefully someone will have the answer. I'm sorry and good luck!

Are you 100% sure the paint was mixed correctly? I think it would be worth buying a quart of paint in Ivoire, painted over what you have to make sure somebody didn't mix the wrong formula.

When we were building our house, we had at least 3 of the rooms painted twice since we didn't like the color (chosen by an interior designer we hired to consult... lesson learned... do it myself!)

In our FL house, we painted when we moved in and I hated it and it has to be repainted.

So, yes, this has happened to be several times...

Once the repainting was done, though, I loved the new result and it was totally worth it. You won't be thinking about the extra money in a few months but if you don't do it, you'll constantly be wishing you did too it, so it is worth paying for the peace-of-mind of having a space you like!

Same here- been there, done that!

We built a 5000 square foot home. I picked about 8 colors. Some I love and some are just okay.

The main color was BM natural cream, which I love in the halls, stairs, and Mudroom but hated it in the dinng room/family. Something about the western light made it turn orange. I had those rooms repainted BM white dove. I spent so much time in that space, I couldn't live with it.

Do you like the Ivoire in any of the rooms?

Been there, done that!

Previous house I had the foyer painted 3, yes "three" times before I found the perfect color. I do most of the painting myself, but this was a 2-story foyer with 20 ft ceilings and my stepladder is only good up to 10ft!

Current house I painted the main living areas twice. First time I did it all myself, except for a staircase wall. Second time I called my painter and his sidekick and the 3 of us worked together to get it all repainted in 1-1/2 days.

It feels so much better when you accept that it isn't working and spend the time/money to fix it. You are in good company! Welcome to the club!

Yellow is tricky. I once painted my living room, dining room, entry, and hallway yellow. It also had a greenish undertone. I lived with it for 2 months and reprinted the entire thing. I did it myself and it took an entire day to repaint.

Wow, apparently I am not alone!!

To answer one question. The colour is Ivoire or as close as I could get. I posted about my saga on here at one point. Sherwin-Williams has the formula totally wrong for Ivoire in the new Emerald Paint (very murky with more even more green undertones). I did not want their higher VOC paint for which the formula might have been correct so I came up with a new plan. So I got a BM store to colour match and they failed miserably. So I went back to SW and they had to colour match their own paint!! And they also failed to get what I considered to be an acceptable match. So then I got another BM store to try another match, and it was the best of the colour matching attempts so I went ahead. Isn't that all just crazy?!

It's possible that, due to the previous color having a blue tone that it's showing through the ivorie. You probably need two coats. Get a small sample and recoat one small area. If you're please then you can do a second coat. What brand paint did you use. I'd like to look at the formula of the color and see if they're is any combo that made it greenish.

Not foolish at all-- looks like you have really tried to make it work and it WOULD have been what you want, but the formula (or previous color as yayagal says) are incorrect.

Green undertones really bother me, too. When we moved to our old house, I picked a gold (from a chip!) and had the 2 main rooms done. Didn't see it being painted (had not moved yet and it was far). Loved it for a few weeks, but then I felt like the walls were closing in on me with all of that gold . . .that had a green undertone. Years later we repainted, but only because my friend and I started the job and there was no turning back (DH could not say no then!).

In our new house, the paint is yellow w/ a green undertone. I HATE IT. It is OK in the day, but not at night. I did not pick the color, but the mom of the PO was an interior designer, so apparently a pro did. :) I am working on picking a new color.

We did 2 coats using BM Aura paint and it was done by professional painters who did an excellent job. The coverage does look good to me. The colour match was not "perfect" and perhaps a tad less apricoty than the Ivoire chip, but it was close and really should not have gone quite so greeny in undertone - I think that partly my house just plays up green undertones in a way that was not obvious until all walls were painted.

In fact, in the guest rooms the paint underneath was pale yellow/cream etc., and the colour still throws green undertones.

I am considering the colour "Wheatfield" - a BM colour. It might pull in enough apricot undertones but still be a yellow/apricot rather than a straight orange/apricot paint. I looked at Safari but Wheatfield looked more vibrant to me. I am open to colour suggestions if anyone has any!! I am after a yellow/apricot hybrid - no green undertones wanted. I am open to anything ranging from pale to mid-range like Ivoire in terms of depth of colour.

This post was edited by Scarlett001 on Tue, Jan 15, 13 at 1:26

Scarlett-- I feel your pain! I had our very patient painter ready for the looney bin as I drayed on colors (even with an interior designer, a contractor and a last minute consult with a colorist). FWIW I found BM paints to be somewhat dull in MY SPACE. I ended up ultimately with Glidden Professional Paint. Our main interior color is a warm tan color called Brazil Nut. You can always take it down a notch lighter by adding more white. It plays differently in different rooms with lighting and exposure, but ultimately, it's beautiful. Good luck!

We had the same problem. I wanted a kind of buttery yellow tan. Tried a bunch of samples, then painted family room and adjoining kitchen. After it was done, I realized that at night the paint had a definite olive tone to it. Really didn't like it. So back to a bunch of samples and picked another one. This time only painted 2 walls and relized it wasn't right either. Third time was the charm. Now happy with the color. We used it on our entire downstairs (except the powder room), stairwell, and upstairs hallway. Sorry, no suggestions for color as it was an Olympic color that was color matched to Dunn-Edwards paint, and done several years ago. So don't feel alone. I think yellows are hard to get right.

I'm so sorry, can feel your pain!
Have you looked at BM standish white? I did my house in it and it didn't have any green undertones at all....just a simple french vanilla color.

I, umm, had the back of our house sided in vinyl siding and decided that I'd picked the wrong color. I wanted something that said GRAY-blue, but it turned out to say BLUE-gray.

I told the guys that the install was wonderful, they did an awesome job with the trim ... But I really disliked the color I picked and it looked really blue. So we changed it. It cost about as much as your interior paint job to redo. But I knew that if they did the other 3 sides and I pulled up to that blue every day I would be sad. Fortunately the gray color also worked with the shingles (which were already on the roof).

Add me to the club. I painted a few rooms the same creamy color. Thankfully the color looks great in the vaulted great room. In the smaller den, not so great. Right now it looks like a really pale chartreuse. Sounds homey, doesn't it?

DH is my painter so there won't be any labor expense but he has basically just painted the whole house, inside and out, so I have to wait a while before I spring a new color on him.

tl;dr

Years ago I used an old Martha Stewart color "Buckwheat" in my Florida home. A gray/green/wet cement color by night and cool sage by day.
I loved it so much that when we were getting ready to move I decided to buy 10 gallons for my new house. I would be using the same draperies, rugs, furniture, and accessories and everything was built around this damn color.

Now, by that time Martha Stewart and K-Mart were not working together with paint, although I did travel to several different K-Marts in an attempt to find someone who still had the right base to mix it for me. They sent me to Sears who was presumably then handling Martha Stewart paint- I went to several Sears stores with no luck. Nobody had any of the required base.
I remember being lost in a construction zone in a strange and dangerous area near tears in frustration.
I spent months looking for this paint!
It must have been right when Martha was between deals or something because I went everywhere in South Florida that sold paint and the proper base was NOWHERE.
I even contacted Martha Stewart Inc.
Unsuccessfully :(

Finally I had the color matched at Sherwin Williams and it missed the mark entirely. So I sucked it up and chose the closest thing I could find on their chips, bought ten gallons, and moved to Kentucky.

Why on earth I did that baffles me even now- did I think there were no paint stores in Kentucky?
Those two five gallon buckets took up valuable space in our truck- I had to leave behind a mower and some patio furniture as it was! I needed that space!

Anyway... we got here and I painted my new house.
It only took about four gallons, so to this day (six years later) I have an unopened five gallon bucket of this paint in my garage.

I did NOT like the color.
It was wrong, but I was tired from moving and painting and decided to live with it. I still hated it and so this past fall I redid my house with a new attempt to capture "Buckwheat."

It is closer, but still not quite right.
It may indeed have to do with the light in northern latitudes being vastly different from the light in the subtropics, I don't know.
I just know that paint colors can be quite vexing and have the ability to reduce normal, capable, functional adults to sniveling idiots, myself included.

So no.
You are not the only person to make a painting mistake.
I posit that the only person never to have made a painting mistake is the person who has never painted.

Is Ellen Kennon or any other of the full spectrum paints available in Canada? Her paints are a sure thing.

My husband thinks I'm a little off because of how many samples I go through. The quality and amount of light plays a huge role in how the paint looks. For my yellow bedroom, I had at least 10 samples and none of them were right. I ended up mixing my own color from the samples and white paint and had SW match it.

Grays are hard, too. Too blue, too green, too beige. That only took 5 or so sample tries to get the color right.

I feel your pain!

Oh, honey!

If it makes you feel any better, I was in the design trade for years, and I made lots of choices that turned out badly. I made a lot more that were great, if I do say so myself :>) ... but there are so many variables in paint choosing that, as cearbhaill says so perceptively, " the only person never to have made a painting mistake is the person who has never painted."

Our California bungalow was white with yellow trim when we bought it, and I wanted it gray with white trim. The California light turned my lovely gray very blue. Redid that.

I painted the living room in our Massachusetts house with the same gorgeous warm neutral taupe of that California house, and it turned purple in the cool northern light. Painted it over.

Our first Virginia house had a lipstick red foyer with bright white trim - it was like standing inside somebody's heart - and I overcorrected with a pale gray-green that looked like the walls of the veteran's hospital. That lasted three weeks.

The dining room of that house came with chalky white wainscot and vinyl fake grasscloth above. Before we sold the house, the room went through taupe with ivory wainscot, warm golden yellow with ivory, and terra cotta top to bottom, and they all looked good, but I was never thrilled enough with any of those to stop painting.

"White Coffee" from B. Moore turned to silly putty in our bedroom.

The only colors I got dead right from the get go were the Spiderweb walls and Peach Tulle ceiling in the library, and the lovely ivory of the trim, doors, ceilings, cabinetry,and paneling. Thank heaven for that!

Be of good cheer, and try again. $1,500 is cheap for years of happiness when the color is right.

I'm in the process of repainting my entire house. I never could get the colors right and couldn't figure out why. Since then I've learned a lot--I need to gray everything down in order to live with the bright pastels I love.

Right now I'm stumped by my east-facing master bedroom which adds green to everything. For example, Wythe Blue appears muddy brown. I don't know how folks can pick one color to work in all the different light in their houses.

Just think how great you'll feel when it's exactly what you want. I cut back on dinners out, etc. to justify costly mistakes I make!

I never realized how hard it was to get it right, but yeah, I've found out. House #1, I wanted a warm tan, almost gold but not too yellow. It came out too pink. House #2 I wanted the same warm tan, although I was leaning a little more bold with my gold at that point - it was beautiful at night but a hideous orange/apricot most of the day.

House #3, same goal, too light and too yellow (this was Ivorie) all day, looked just ok at night.

House #4, my current apartment, I went a little more warm tan, less gold, and it's better both day and night. I don't have as much gold as I wanted, but was just so scared of the opposite (too much orange or yellow). Of all the choices, it's the best, though goodness knows in another house it might not work at all.

I think I'm moving again and honestly, I'm ditching the gold idea. It's too hard to get right. Maybe there is no getting it right? I mean day and night are so different, each house gets different exposure from the sun which can reflect different colors at different seasons. Here, you get bright sunshine reflecting either green, green grass in the spring or yellow dried up vegetation in the late summer or a distant sun glistening off the snow.

If you're going to repaint, I'd find the wall that is the most irritating to you, do big big swatches (like 1/2 of the wall, lol, of your final 2 choices, live with it for a week or two, then choose.

I did all the painting in our previous house, a three-story Victorian twin. In the years we lived there, I did the third floor hall FIVE times. I mean, really, how hard is it to find a decent color for a hall?

What made the whole exercise particularly irritating is that (1) the hall was over 25 feet long and (2) the stairwell from the second to third floors ran up along one wall of the hall - there was ONLY about six inches of ledge on that side serving as hall "floor." To paint that part of the wall, I actually set up makeshift scaffolding consisting of 100% wood boards, with one end of the boards placed between the stair railing on one side of the stairwell and the other end placed on the six inches of "floor," and with my stepladder placed directly over the stairwell. I didn't want to have anything more than necessary on the stepladder, so the paint can and of course paint pan were on the hall floor. I had to get myself under the stair railing and up (and then down) the ladder. Cutting in on that part of the wall at ceiling height was a real b***tch if I do say so myself. I was up & down the ladder COUNTLESS times! The drop from top step of the ladder to the second floor was...what? Possibly 20 feet, if not more.

We did our FR here in what, IF my recollection is correct, is Benjamin Moore Honeywheat. It might be far too gold and orange for your taste, but here, it's a very warm color. We use the room mostly in the evening and at night, and the walls have a beautiful warm glow to them. But the color is definitely not a pale creamy yellow.

Many many years ago -- My parents painted their guest room in a bright happy sunny yellow shade -- which promptly turned to a sour lime greeny shade ... they lived with that mistake for YEARS until finally had the room re-painted in a neutral tone ....

Yellow is indeed a tricky color -- and can be SO different from room to room -- and from house to house!

And yes!! I have made MANY color mistakes (and LOTS of other decor mistakes) ... but the ONLY paint color that I got right from the start was the Bright White high-gloss wood panelled walls in our one-and-only living room. Love that the panelling reflects so much light -- from lamps to candles and even firelight! LOL! :)

Just re-paint ... and breathe, breathe, breathe. Lots of folks make so many decor mistakes and mis-steps and even mishaps .... LOL! :)

I wanted a medium tan with orange undertones for my bathroom and somehow wound up with a medium orange with tan undertones. I'm not sure why I thought "Persian melon" would not be orange. OTOH it's a gorgeous color that calmed down the pink in the tile and I had wanted new towels anyway.

As you have already read, you are SO not alone. I consider myself good at choosing colors and have made many mistakes.... and the green undertone problem is such a common one! I learned to paint up lots of samples on all the walls of a room before choosing. I also ask people in my area for "great" or "tried and true" colors since so many great color choices are regional due to the different quality of light in different regions.

Hear is one benefit of making a mistake - you will love your final "right" color all the more. Every time you walk into a room you will think "ahhh, SO much better!"

My DH hates to paint and always complains that "our rooms were two feet wider before you started all this nonsense".
Once I picked Hawthorne Yellow for the kitchen. The very next day he went and bought light cream colour paint and repainted.
He said there was no way he was living with that "egg yolk explosion".
Are you silly? Not at all!! Everyone makes colour 'mistakes', even the professional designers.

That is my life. I don't mind painting so the cost isn't nearly that bad. I have a hard time getting the right shade as I can't imagine it on a large scale. And, like Olychick suggested, is the tint correct. I have had many mistints but figured it was me not seeing right and after it dried, it's wrong.
Count me in with loss of square footage group.

I too lost square footage on our house by a lake. My friends joked about how often I painted. For years I tried to get a neutral tan or beige, but everything turned green or pink. At one time, I had eight different colors on my walls. I finally read an artical about how the different directions the windows face impacts paint color. We had two sliding door lake side, which was north, so we had a cool light reflection. The artical actually listed neutral colors that wouldn't change. I finally gave up on neutrals and now paint distint colors. http://paintpro.net/Articles/PP804/PP804-Colors.cfm

I was just inspired to haul out my BM fan deck. The color that I picked was more brown than the color that wound up on my wall. It was supposedly "color matched" in SW paint, but the match is none too accurate. It is, however, very pretty.

Women have as many as four different color receptors while men can have no more than three and many, like my DH, have only two. Women are consequently able to see smaller variations in colors.

Lodalady, thanks for that article. I have often thought that I could easily live with my LR color if only it always had the warm sunshine from the a.m. hours!

Jxbrown, my DH cannot usually even name what colors are in the rooms of the house! Interesting that it is gender-based. I wonder why?

This is why builders paint everything white.

Sorry to hear about your disappointment with your paint, especially after all the research that you put into it! I am agreeing with a couple of points people brought up, maybe it was in covering up the blue, maybe it is in your particular lighting and structure, maybe the mix is wrong. I have SM Ivoire throughout our main living area and it is just as ou described, creamy yellow with apricot undertones, not a hint of green. Somebody brought up the point that colors do vary room to room, house to house so maybe that is what you are doing here. In that case, not so much of a "mistake" on your part, but a lovely color that doesn't quite work for you. Similar to how a bright yellow sweater looks great on my friend, but washes me out. Good look in finding a new color!

BTDT. It stinks big time. We did it in rooms with vaulted ceilings up to 20 feet. Not once but twice! Paint colour can be so tricky.

DH still loves to tell the story the time we screwed up the paint color twice. :-/

Great stories everyone! Definitely confirmed that I am not alone! :D

Very interesting that someone did use Ivoire and it looked the way that I wanted (creamy yellow with apricot undertones). Not much to be done about it, as I wanted low-VOC or no-VOC paint the SW Emerald formula for Ivoire was even worse than the colour matches that followed. I tried 3 colour matches, and there is only so much one can do. Maybe the colour match was just too off, or maybe Ivoire plays differently in my house. Bottom line, it does not work. So time to move on. :)

I am "Scarlett2001" and I wonder why "Scarlett001' is using a name so close to mine????

I have decided that I cannot be pleased when it comes to wall paint!!!! I hate me! I never seem to like it. I have to always try two times and then I'm still not always happy with it. I don't think paint ever looks like the chip or even the sample you buy and put up. It changes so much when it's all up and throughout the day. I'm very color sensitive and drive myself nuts. So now I just ignore it. I don't like the master bath paint. It's been two years of not liking it after painting it twice, but not knowing what else to do, it's still there. You are definitely not alone! Good luck.