Well hello Red!

One thing that I notice about the RH stores is that they are very bright and filled w/ light whether it be real or artifically simulated sinlight.

I had SS color matced MANY times and only once was it dead on. My other colormatches that I tried and even painted an entire room seemd to gothat soft pastel blue and I quickly changed it. This was also a very light filled room.

My colormatch that went right would have looked quite good on the walls as far as I was concerned w/o going pastel or blue. This was probably the most time consuming match that I ever went through! The guy wasn't satisfied and kept tweaking it. He kept mentioning that he had to get it greyer and greener than what the initial 'colormatch' read was.

So maybe the moral of my story is this: While all of my colormatches looked good and matched the SS chip, once they went all over the walls they appeared blue. The only one that was dead on to the chip and DIDN'T go blue was the one that was tweaked beyond belief by the guy who tweaked the computer generated colormatch formula to get rid of the perceived blue that I didn't even notice.

I did sample the real SS in a dark room and I didn't think that it showed up well. What I didn't do at the time (and now know so much better!) is that I really should have painted at least one entire wall or better yet 2.

ttodd - thanks for posting. I was curious about the answer as well. Your point about RH stores being well lit is an important one. Everything in their stores looks good.

I have it in a BR that gets late afternoon light. The color really changes and I like that. When I first started to pu it on I was crestfallen. It looked like Mint and I did not want and '80s mint. But it turned out beautifully. I see it as more Green than Blue though. I like that as the sun moves, different walls go from light-dark and almost look like accent walls were painted.

Hi Red,

2 of my neighbors used SS in their family room. It's actually very blue in their house, not green at all. Their rooms have medium-low light & SS looks more like a greyish blue in their house.

Hi,
I used silver sage in my kitchen/family room and, to me, it looks like a soft grey green. I get a medium amount of light in that room. It looks like it does in their stores, maybe just a little lighter. You can see silver sage on a wall of my kitchen/family room in the Abingdon Putty thread where I posted a couple of pictures today.

I think RH colors are hard to match. My BM dealer tried to match Latte for me and it's off. I tried another and it was closer but not an exact match. The same was true for Cappuccino. I bought the Cappuccino from RH and am very pleased with the finish as well as the way it went on the walls (I did the painting). I got the paint on sale so it was compatible to BM or SW paint prices. If I had to do it over again, I would buy the real thing. Just my experience. BTW, I have always loved SS and was disappointed to see the stores now painted grey.

Two RH paint stories:

- I worked at RH from 1997-2002. We needed to "touch up" paint a wall in the store and, long story short, found out that when the store had been painted, they had NOT used real RH Silver Sage!!!! We were aghast! It was some Benjamin Moore color-matched paint. It did not match. That was many years ago. Perhaps now, the stores are REALLY painted with the paint they sell!

- Like a previous poster said, I had Latte "color-matched" at Lowe's. I used it in two bathrooms. It does NOT look the same as the RH color. It doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look the same.

dash - Urban Legend has it that the original RH paint color was BM Gray Wisp. Proved so poular RH began marketing and selling their own w/ their own paint formulation.

Here is a thread from GW a while ago that listed the BM colors that most closely matched the RH colors.

Here is a link that might be useful: RH/BM paint colors

I had it in my master bedroom and bath. It appeared greyish blue. I find it depends on the other colors in the room. If you use blue bedding, the walls looked more sagey green. Against white-bluish. I think it really looks best against white. It does change with the light.

Jane

... and it all depends on what brand and base. Silver Sage is just like Tobacco Road -- not all formulas are created equal. Paint stores like to go with the theory that the human eye can not distinguish the diff between formulas. That you can arrive at the 'same color' via many different combinations of colorant. Turns out that theory often gets shot all to hell when you paint out an entire room.

The best match to the original Silver Sage color chip is from Ben Moore and mixed interior Regal Matte.

I hesitate to use a word like 'always' but it sure seems that SW's version of Silver Sage always comes out with a strong green edge -- and that's not what the original SS looked like at all.

I have SS in two bedrooms, one with a lot of natural light and one with very little light; both bedrooms have white spreads, black picture frames, etc. In the light filled room, the color changes from gray-green to blue-green throughout the day and I love it. In the low light room, it stays pretty much a dead gray-green and I hate it, but my son it happy with it. I think the color it very, very light dependent. I used the RH store paint.

My family room and kitchen are silver sage. My kitchen is a dead ringer color-matched BM. When I painted my MIL's kitchen, I bought RH's silver sage (on sale). It is a great color and RH's paint was such a great quality that I don't think I'd bother color matching again. I'll just buy RH paint next time. Currently loving their grays.

While SS is so beautiful in the stores and in some of the photos I've seen, the thing I liked was the grayed green with only subtle leaning to blue. I think all the posts above that clarified were very helpful. What I need now is a gray leaning to green. I will save SS for a bath or different room for another day.
Thanks to all who helped me talk myself out of it!

Red

Hi Red,

I painted my formerly niece's room (now becoming nephew's room) Blue gray and it's a greyish green with subtle blueish undertone (at certain light). Most people think it's grayish green but then they look at the corner and see that it's actually blueish gray.

It's a sombre color - not as vibrantly blue as RH SS. Maybe it's what you are looking for!