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Paint colors keep turning blue in my lighting

11 years ago

I am trying to find a green-gray color to paint my kitchen. My cabinets are Merillat Maple Toffee. The kitchen gets a lot of natural light and every paint color that looks green-gray ends up looking pastel blue on the walls. I've tried SW Chatroom and BM Winterwood. SW Svelte Sage is also a tad too saturated green in there. I had originally painted SW Blonde which turned a very florescent shade of green-yellow on the walls. It was painted over with Eddie Bauer Pecan. But I'm not loving that color - it's just too much orange with the cabinets and I don't like it with the back splash. I need to cool it down and/or lighten it up. I've sampled SW Patience which matches the lighter tiles in my back splash and their website says it's in the orange family. SW Patience is almost identical to Benjamin Moore Navajo White. The natural light greys that color and it loses it's warmth until night time when the incandescent lights are on. I have no clue what color to paint the walls in that room. I have Behr Basketry in the family room that the kitchen opens up to (Basketry is similar to SW Latte but I see a tad more red in the Basketry).

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Comments (4)

Pines Everywhere
11 years ago
Cocorhum -- you sound like your driving yourself crazy! I am not going to advise on color but I'll share what I do when I am at my wits end with color and no solution is emerging.

Buy some canvass painters boards (art supply shop or JoAnns) -- they come in all sizes. Paint several a range of colors you are considering and prop them up in several places in the kitchen, move them around, view them in different lighting. Keep eliminating the ones that don't work and paint new ones as needed.

Home Depot sells custom sample paints for like $2 (maybe you know this) and I've found diddling with these boards and samples gets me pretty close to the perfect color.

Good luck!
zaara10
11 years ago
I have SW svelte sage in my guest room & I love it, but it is more on the green side. Have u tried one shade up, grassland? I sampled it but didn't like it bc I thought it had too much grey in it for what I wanted.
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Same here, la_la Girl. We sampled several darker grays to work with a peachy brick, and the best was BM Kendall Charcoal that leans a tad green. The house doesn't look green, though. HU-822985052, I hesitated to make suggestions to repaint everything, because I know how expensive it is. I'm not sure what lighter color would work with Kendall Charcoal, but we can certainly do some research if you want to go that route. It's so tricky to choose colors that will look as good on your whole house as they do in your hand. Not my house, but you can see it doesn't look green. You can use it for just the trim, and find a lighter color that gives the same non-blue/purple result.
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cocorhum
Original Author
11 years ago
oh ... that's good to know grasdlands is grayer than svelte sage. I actually have a poster board up right now painted svelte sage and its a little too saturated with green for what I need. it sounds like I need to give grasslands a try. thanks for that info!
cocorhum
Original Author
11 years ago
oh ... that's good to know grasdlands is grayer than svelte sage. I actually have a poster board up right now painted svelte sage and its a little too saturated with green for what I need. it sounds like I need to give grasslands a try. thanks for that info!

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