Thanks yayagal. I have looked at that color but I'm worried it would just look white. I'm hoping to find something with a little bit of color to it. Maybe I'll pick up a sample tomorrow and try it anyway.

What about going lighter on the paint strip? According to the BM website they would be broxburn greige or tennyson white.

They don't look like they are even in the same color family when put next to each other. It doesn't seem to be one of the colors that can work by reducing the formula.

Nope. Cutting formulas doesn't work with ANY color from ANY collection. It's a crap shoot. Those who say it works haven't done it enough to get burned and thus come to the realization that the one time it worked for them was simply a matter of luck. Interior designers are the ones who often recommend this in print magazines. It roughly translates to "I have not one fat freaking clue about color but, hey, this makes for a good sound bite." :-D

What about going lighter on the paint strip?

Won't work with Shale and that blade from that fandeck. Classic Color fan blades are comprised of 7 unique colors each. I don't know how they decided which seven to put on each strip but non of the colors relate to each other. They're just kind of there. It's the Classic Colors collection but it's not ordered to a classic ordering system. Go figure. Included a link to a podcast from 2010 that explains more.

The two color solutions I'd pull for you to take a look at are both from Sherwin Williams. There's nothing in the BenM decks that I'd pull for a ceiling color with Shale. From SW it'd be SW 7021 Simple White and SW 6070 Heron Plume. With odds on Simple White.

Here is a link that might be useful: All about the Ben Moore Fandecks Burst of Color Podcast

Always informative, funcolors. I learned something. Thanks!

funcolors, yes the way BM has done their classic colors drives me nuts. I'm one who really likes to find my favorite color and then use the others on the same strip around the house so everything blends. I hate not having that paint strip with Shale! Thanks for your advice. I was going to try SW today anyway so I'll definitely take a look at the 2 you mentioned.

Every now and then a faux finisher or painter will manage to bend the ear of someone in charge of color collections. Next thing you know they've taken a perfectly ordered color system and completely !@#$ it up.

I don't know if that's what' happened to Classic Colors but it stands in stark disorganization to the Color Preview deck. There is an art and science to color. Science needs to supercede art when it comes to organization and order. Else the rest of us end up having to deal with another person's opinion of order instead of mathematically plotted, logical order.

Check out a new Valspar display in Banbury UK. The deck is equally organized. This is color poetry. But I digress. (as usual)

Not to hijack, but I have a question. When I look at my classic colors fan deck for shale, the colors on the strip are very different from what the BM website says are the lighter and darker colors. On the fan deck, shale is 861 and is the darkest color. On the website, shale is a mid color with the two I posted above lighter. Can I believe any of what BM says then as far as lighter/darker, color palettes, etc?

Geo, those are the Darryl Carter color names. Kind of underscores my point about when they let a designer/painter type get a hold of the colors it ends up a hot mess and/or hotter mess.

Darryl Carter's Bronxburn Greige is Abalone 2108-60 and Tennyson is Calm OC-22.

They probably popped up because per the numbers they come close to Shale. They both lean more red than Shale. Looking at the chips, they don't harmonize very well IMHO.

I tried both abalone and calm and neither looked good with shale to me. Especially calm. It looked really pink. I've wondered too what rhyme or reason there is to the colors and shades that pop up on the BM website. They don't seem to make sense. And, maybe all companies do this, but it bugs me to no end that BM has multiple names for the same color! They even have them in their fan decks multiple times with different names. (ex: revere pewter is the same color as ice formations, each in the fan deck taking up space and making it more confusing to find colors) Funcolors, I now have a sample of Simple White, Heron Plume, and Heron white (I added that one) on my wall waiting for them to dry. Fingers crossed one of them looks amazing. Painters are waiting on me to buy paint.....

And the verdict is......I still don't have a paint color. :( Simple white is about the perfect amount of color I'm looking for, but it's looking pink for some reason. Heron Plume looks good, but it just looks white and I really don't want a plain white ceiling. I really thought once I picked my wall color the hard part was over!

Last resort, try mixing your own. Get a quart of the Shale paint's white base (don't know how dark Shale or the base is, assuming it is a white). Then in small quantities, try mixing a lighter Shale color from the two. If you find what you like, try to have it matched. This worked like magic for me after struggling with way too many sample pots that often didn't even match the chips.

I have since gotten some white plastic measuring cups and spoons and lidded plastic food containers from the Dollar Store to try to gauge amounts (recipes) here on out. But the first mix I did, I just eyeballed it, little by little until it pleased my eye.

Since they dry darker, I'd keep the Simple White can of wet paint nearby so you can compare its darkness (value), if you think that's the shade you want.

Simple White is red hue family. A hint of pink doesn't surprise me. But Shale is right there in the red to yellow-red hue family neighborhood too. Which is why Simple White was a contender.

Are you testing it on the ceiling? Once you turn color from vertical to horizontal above your head this thing called 'flop angle' kicks in and it does change how the color is perceived. The angle strips chroma so the color looks less colorful and more gray and it also appears darker in value.

The only other idea is yet another color - Incredible White SW 7028 which is about the same chroma (amount of colorfulness) as Simple White but it's more squarely in the yellow-red hue family so it's less likely it would show as pink.

As far as ordered color systems, Dunn-Edwards the Perfect Palette might be the ultimate. California Paints licenses it because it's awesome. Benjamin Moore is actually one of, if not the most, poorly organized of all the color collections I work with. Again, likely more designer-type opinion as opposed to common sense and logic could be the culprit. i.e. The Affinity deck is marketed that all the colors coordinate. Coordinate is arguable. Rather the colors all have about the same amount of grayness. A tight range or consistent amounts of gray means they match on the aspect of grayness. Doesn't necessarily mean they harmonize.

Color harmony is just another way to say color order and vice versa. Matching just one aspect like grayness does not constitute order therefore does not constitute harmony. So, the Affinity collection is just as ineffective as Classic Colors.

I was told that every color in the Affinity collection was designed to work together.

Have they changed the organization of the Classic Colors deck? I have an old one and it has seemed like the colors on the strip go from lighter to darker. Don't have it with me. They are certainly similar on mine, except for the HC section.

This post was edited by snookums2 on Fri, Feb 22, 13 at 12:57

BM recommends 2121-40 silver half dollar

Yes, I am testing them all on the ceiling along a wall that has already been painted Shale. I'm also putting the samples in 2 separate locations on the ceiling to see how it looks from different angles, etc. I may try to stop and get another sample of incredible white. Thank you for you advice funcolors! Here's hoping your third suggestion is the winner! :) I'll let you know.

2121-40 is a very pretty toned blue and it does coordinate with Shale. Gray blue would be a new consideration.

Snooks, yes, exactly. That's what I was talking about. Sherwin Williams says the same thing with the HGTV colors. "Designed to go together" I think there is some discussion to be had about what that means. Again, colors are similar in the aspect of *average* grayness but every hue family is represented in the collection(s). Basic laws of color relationships still apply; can't just pull colors from Affinity/HGTV willy-nilly and assume a harmonious color scheme will result.

Classic Colors is not stepped light to dark. The other deck Color Preview IS in steps. However, problem with Color Preview is most of the colors are simple and clear and do not necessarily make ideal colors for the built environ.

Good luck, aggie!

This post was edited by funcolors on Fri, Feb 22, 13 at 13:15

Well, we may have a winner! Incredible white looks really good! I still need to test it in another spot to take another look at it, but I like it! I also picked up Egret white (SW 7570) and it's starting to look pretty too. It's not totally dry yet though. Funcolors, do you have any thoughts on that color coordinating with Shale? I went from not having a single option to possibly having 2 that I can't decide between! Ha!

Does anyone have a SW fan deck who can tell me the lrv for incredible white? I'm just curious.

In about 6 months we are planning on adding crown molding to some of the rooms we are currently painting. If I go with SW incredible white on the ceiling will it look bad if we paint the molding a different white, like BM dove white? Will they look better if they are the same white?

Incredible White's lrv is 75.

Shale, White Dove, Incredible White is a lovely color scheme IMO. No, I don't think it will look bad a different white. Maybe mix up the sheen too. Flat on ceiling, some gloss on molding.