I think Mashed Potatoes sounds fine, but of course the color of my current kitchen is BM "Split Pea".

I think there is definitely a psychological component to choosing paint colors based on their names. It's hard not to make associations.

When I was choosing paint for the rooms in my new home I found myself making a conscious effort to override my initial reaction to some colors based on their names - and it works both ways. Sometimes the name brought up such a positive connotation that I thought I liked the actual color more than I really did.

It helps if you can get color chips and lay them out without the names being visible.

I could NOT care less what the colors are called.

What matters to ME is how the color looks in MY house with MY stuff!

Besides... several of my colors make absolutely NO sense whatsoever!
I mean...
BM Spoonful of Sugar... NOT white or another whitish shade at all!
BM Weekend Getaway... what color would you even guess that is?
And this weekend I am painting DD's old room BM Bright & Early... NOT yellow as most would guess.

I think there was a thread about this a long time ago. We were wondering how the companies come up with new colors and how they name them. I think it would be a fun job.

That said, Mashed Potatoes isn't really that weird but now I'm dying to see it. You're going to have to post photos when it's done!

I have to try to not look at the names on paint colors because they have a very strong positive or negative affect on me. When I go to the nail salon to get a pedicure I find myself picking the colors based on the name. OPI has the craziest names for their colors.

Mashed Potatoes is a very strange name and does not seem like a good name choice for something people will be putting on their walls.

The name is always an influence for me from paint to nailpolish and lipstick. My bathroom paint is Chocolate fudge (yum!) and my lipstick is Pecan Pie (another yum!).
I've always wanted to go to Tuscany and my nail polish is named Tuscan Sun. I think Mashed Potatoes is funny!
I pick the color first, but the name helps to make the final decision. I would love to have that job! Or to name ice creams!

After selecting the colors I like I definetely am influenced by names if I can't quite decide between several. However, I like the name Mashed Potatoes. I agree about some colors not matching their names.

My new couch colour is "roasted marshmallow". I wonder if the person that named the colour has actually ever roasted a marshmallow, because the couch is actually more of an olive-toned taupe. I've roasted zillions of marshmallows in my day, and not one ever looked remotely like the colour of my couch, LOL.

Carrie

Oh sure! I was down to two choices for the master bath in our old house. They were C2 colors. One was Karma and the other was so forgetable, I don't remember its name.

I really, really wanted the Karma (this was before the stupid Earl show came on). In the end I actually went with one that had a bit more green to it. Wasn't the Karma :( but it was the correct color.

Now I'm that way with BM Paris Rain. Love the name and love it when it rains in Paris. However, the next color I will be using is BM Baby Turtle. Hate the name but love the color.

And when my 4 year old wanted light pink for her room I was thrilled, so she picked out a great one, and then I told her the name, and she's says, "no, no no". So she went through the swatch until she found a suitable name, which just happened to be a super dark pink. Finally, after distracting her a bit, I said, what about this one (original light pink), and I told her the name was the dark pink just so she'd say yes. :)

I'd take a weird, or other food name over "mashed potatoes" anyday. "Mashed Potatoes" just screams, BORING, DRAB, LAME. I was all set to pick a whiter shade like "pristine linen", but the designer I consulted with suggested that there be a hint of yellow so it flows better with the wall colors. Even afterwards I was still going to go with a whiter shade, but even my contractor suggested "mashed potatoes", so that's what I'm going with. It's still pretty darn white, but until it's painted I won't know for sure.

I think the F&B colors win in the "offputting names" category (see below :))

The one thing that I am put off by wrt paint color names is when something is called "so and so green" when it's clearly blue or beige or brown...BM is the worst offender in this category, IMO. I try to see it as the color it appears on the wall but I keep thinking I'm seeing it wrong, because BM says it's green...it really throws a big wrench into my color evaluation works.

Here is a link that might be useful: sounds so much more authoritative with an accent

That link is soooo funny!

Great Link!!!!!!!

I don't really pay a lot of attention to the names. My doors and trim are all painted "garlic clove", so I guess that could be good or bad.

I considered painting the master bedroom Blonde... but my mother is a "blonde" so that crossed the weird line for me.

And what is up with sky colors? Every line has their own version of sky, but have you ever compared them! What purple cartoon like places are they living? And some are downright Smurfy.

Grays always have such depressing names. Computer gray, bland gray, unimportant gray, silent gray... Sheesh! Where is the Sea Gull, that is all I am asking!

Naming paints is my fantasy job!

And yes, I too am influenced by the names, though I really, really try not to be. And it just ticks me off to no end that the perfect color for my recently-completed bed & bath suite is
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(I'm SO embarassed!)

Off White
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daisyadair I think Garlic Clove is the PERFECT name for door and window trim. Gotta keep those vampires away.

I look at color first then check out the name. Oddly enough, pretty much all the colors I have liked have a food-related name (popped corn, herbal mist, capri cream...).

My best paint name story (well, ok - my only paint name story) is about the time I painted the kitchen in a previous home in what I thought was going to be a delightful white shade with just a hint of pink. The color was called "String of Pearls." I got one wall done, looked back and burst into tears -- it was ghastly. Positively puke-inducing. And then I looked down at the paint lid and noticed that the guy at Sherwin Williams had written on the can: "Sting of Pearls." Oh boy. Yeah, it stung alright. (Stink of Pearls would have been highly appropriate as well ...)

OMG, I can't help myself! Just recommended BM "Paris Rain" to someone on the paint forum.

Actually, I thought the color would be perfect. :)

Surely I can't be the only one who consistently thinks of a "BM" when I see the customary Benjamin Moore abbreviation, can I? Combined with the color names, I sometimes get some really awful visuals.

Aren't you glad I shared that? ;-)~

LOL, actually, I've thought that too...but then I got lazy. :)

Yes auntjen, you *are* the only one, and stop calling me Shirley.

OMG! That link is hysterical!! I'm wiping the tears from laughing so hard. I hope I don't wake my kids up.

But the boy on YouTube has quite the posh accent, and I don't mean Mrs. Beckham. Precisely the people buying Dead Salmon. I once had a room painted in Crock Full, and I did love the color. I believe it's now called Potato Peel.

I remember when I was going to paint my son's room. I wanted just a nice, light clean blue. We looked at some chips in his room together and sure enough, he picked Olympics Sterling Silver. He totally picked it because of the name!

Mashed Potatoes is my ultimate comfort food so I'm thinking it's a smashing name for your ceilings!! harhar

I like the name mashed pototoes, it has a country ring to it and I think it would be fitting in a kitchen.

Maybe for a kitchen, but not my office. Now I have to work with mashed potatoes hanging over my head!

I like Johnmari's color as a great example of pretty shade/oddball name: BM Wet Concrete. Somehow the image of wet concrete just sounds ooky, yet the pictures of her walls are always lovely.

As for me, I posted last night about how much I love a restful, spare home environment. A few minutes after I sent that, while thinking about the topic, I almost laughed out loud...the color of my living room is: Quiet Moments :).

Ann