It can be a frustrating process! As awful as it can make a room look while I'm deciding on a 'new' color, I tend to paint as large a sample of the color I can on every wall and observe it for several days.

It may not be to your liking but I've painted what I consider a dark, but warm brown in my house. It's called 'New Chestnut'. It's in the Behr line but I don't get it mixed in Behr paint.

Choosing paint colors...so difficult! it sounds like the colors that you paint inside your house are put in light that highlights their undertones; bringing out either the green, red, or yellow in each paint color. I would go back to the paint store and explain the situation. Sometimes they have people at the paint store that are very good at helping with paint colors(and sometimes not). It's worth a try. The other thing you can do is check out painted paper samples from Benjamin moore so that you don't have to buy lots of pots. you can bring the painted paper samples home and tape them to the wall and see what happens in your light. This might help save time and frustration. Sorry I don't have a recommendation for a particular color; there are so many variables that come into play that it's hard to choose colors remotely:-)

Good luck!

Register yourself as a designer at benjaminmoore.com-then you can order large paper swatches from them. They are free and are even shipped for free! I order multiples of the colors that make my short list for a particular room and then I hang them in groups in different spots in the room.

I'll tell you two more things that are strictly my opinion...

First of all the Affinity colors are very saturated-I like the chips but many times they end up being overpowering on the wall. Affinity reds are the best reds I know of but for any other tone I avoid Affinity. I have sampled almost all of the greens, yellows, blues, and a few of what you might consider neutrals, and always opted for a color from either the BM historical pallette or SW concepts in color that was pretty close to an affinity color but didn't take over the room the way the affinity colors would have. Love Aura paint, but not affinity colors.

Second, yellows are very hard to get right-I think they are the toughest colors of all. They always end up more potent on the wall than you think they will be. My very favorite yellow-y color is an old BM color called "Featherbed"-it's #928. If you look at the chip you will think there is nothing to it but it just works up on the wall. I've used it in 3 houses and many friends have used it in theirs as well-one very particular friend calls it her "last yellow". I always look for reasons to use something different and always come back to it-it makes everyone happy.

Hi crzyktchnlady.

I'm pretty critical about some things, but I'm pretty relaxed when it comes to paint. If it's in the ballpark, I'm generally OK with that. Sometimes I paint when I move into a new place, but sometimes I just live with whatever's already there, you know. It's not like I have to impose my own exquisite taste on every inch of my surroundings, the way some people I see on the bus apparently can't function uness they're listening to Their Own Favoriute Tunes every moment of their day. I have favorite music too, but listening only to stuff I pre-selected sosunds pretty boring to me. Where's the surprise factor? Anyway, so I tend not to get hung up on a color that comes out different than I imagined. I mean, why would paint be any different than everything else in my life? Deal with it. Go with the flow. That's my motto.

As to why your old color looked great at your old place & icky in the new place, it may just be a matter of the direction your windows face, and whether it's blue sky, green trees or gray concrete that's coloring the light. Those things make a huge difference, and even if you have a color that you absolutely love in a particular room, I can guarantee you that it looks different on a sunny morning than it does on an overcast day.

But here's the thing: once a room is finished and we've gotten used to it, we stop seeing those constant color changes, but when a coat of paint first goes up, people freak out over a perfectly normal change in appearance over the course of a day. It's not nearly as big a problem as some people make it, and once all the stuff gets moved back into place, and the curtains are hung and the artwork up, it will probably be fine.

The undertone issue is a different matter. All paint colors except those derived from a single colorant--that is, the most uninteresting colors--have undertones because paints are generally made up of a different bunch of impure pigments, and some have more than others. Full spectrum paints are absolutely swimming in undertones, and some people pay extra money for their complexity & subtle changes that occur over the course of a day, while the same changes are enough to make other people crazy. Me, I figure I have enough problems without freaking out because I'm seeing a hint of--OMG--green in my yellow paint. Oh, well.

But for those people who can't sleep unless they know there won't be any nasty surprises inside the paint can they thought was a nice, creamy yellow, here's a trick I learned in design school: instead of painting a flat swatch, paint the inside of a shoe box, which will allows the color to bounce off itself, intensifying & revealing its component colors. Basically it's the same effect as when you see two opposing mirrors reflecting each other. Looking at one mirror, you may not even don't notice the barely perceptible greenish cast to the glass--a result of iron impurities--but when the multiple reflections start building up, that green tint becomes really obvious. Too, the ricocheting light bouncing off the inside of the painted shoe box will do the same thing & bring all that out into the open, giving you a better idea of the effect in a finished room with all four walls in the same color. It's much easier to adjust the paint color when you're still at the shoebox stage.

Regards,
Magnaverde.

I have the Aura 'Honeymoon' in my office, and it's FAR from school bus yellow. Perhaps try different light bulbs, which can greatly affect the way paint looks. In my room, it's a rich, warm golden.

I am having the whole interior of my house painted.

So is it dry yet? Ya know it can take several days for colors to dry out to their final state. Especially the ones packed with pigment.

Aura's Affinity Colors colorants are acrylic and they are different from the regular colorants we're used to. I have noticed that they can take some extra time to *develop* and they often (depending on the color) grow richer looking as they cure out. The depth develops and the yummy visual appeal is all of the sudden just there.

I agree you should chill and give yourself a minute to get some stuff back in the rooms and warm up to the color changes.

I LOVE this forum, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE you all. What great advice. I never even heard of paper swatches!

trk65 - That's great info about Affinity, right on the button. This is just what has happened with the intensity of a few of these colors that I loved on the chips.

magnaverde - Funny thing is both my living rooms face north with a glass door on the east, but I never thought about other factors, such as the last one faced the street and this one faces into the yard. The shoebox idea is brilliant. And yes, I need to relax a bit. I've been in "renovation world" for too long.

Honeymoon looks beautiful in my3dogs photo - maybe I just need to see it with furniture, drapes, artwork, etc. I will look into the New Chestnut if I decide to redo the hall - the easiest least expensive area to repaint.

Thank you all for the great thoughts!

That photo of Honeymoon above is gorgeous! I agree with most of what the others are saying. You need to paint a large square on your walls (in several areas of the wall) and live with it for a few days so you can see how different times of day affect the color. One color might look amazing in one house, but in another house it will look slightly different all because of how the sun rises and sets in proximity to your house and also how much natural light comes in. In my previous home there were no windows on the sides of the house - windows were only in front and back and there were shadows everywhere. In my new house I have tons of light coming in from everywhere. I am sure the same paint color would take on different tones in both houses.

My advice is this: keep on trying until you get it right and are happy with it. I just recently went through big trials and tribulations with my dining room (there is a huge thread on it in here) and I repainted 3 times. Just know that making the mistakes are what eventually lead you to "get it right". So don't fret over wasted $$ and time on wrong paint colors. Good luck and keep us posted!

I find that flooring affects wall color too. When sunlight shines in, it bounces off the floor, afterall. A favorite buttery ivory color that worked so well in my first house looked yellow green in another. But that's because the first house had off-white carpeting, and the second home had green slate floors. An apricot shade that was so pretty in the second house looked like Manilla Envelope in the third because the wood floors cast a brownish tint on the walls.

Interesting, the idea about painting the inside of a shoebox. Thanks, magnaverde.

Aura's Affinity Colors colorants are acrylic and they are different from the regular colorants we're used to. I have noticed that they can take some extra time to *develop* and they often (depending on the color) grow richer looking as they cure out. The depth develops and the yummy visual appeal is all of the sudden just there.

OMG! That explains it! I was just saying to DH a couple of weeks ago that our Aura-painted "office" (Affinity color called Spa), looks so much nicer now (about 6 months post-painting give or take) than it had during the first few months (or longer). It looked much minty-er than I'd wanted (or expected), but now it looks a lot more like the color I was hoping to get! Yay!

I had the same disaster with BM Honeymoon, so horrible that I finally posted a tale of woe on this site asking for help and sympathy. On our walls, in a long and tall living/dining room, it goes from true yellow to intense apricot in a Barbie Dream House sorta way. It does look fantastic in 'my3dogs' photo though, like a rich gold, which is what I was after. I am now committed to using BM Historical Colors and, after asking for more color help here, will be using BM Decatur Buff to repaint the entire area next week. You're not alone!

OMG! That explains it!

It does make it a little challenging when it comes to large sized chips and wet samples of Affinity colors.

So far the Affinity color testing/sample process has been very good to excellent with the resulting color. Once developed, the consensus so far is that it comes out even better than expected. However...

When the margin of error for previewing color MUST be as narrow as possible, I get a quart of Aura in the color and sheen and let the sample dry for at least a week.

It's a little risky to paint a sample board with Aura in the evening and play with it the next day.

Many people don't ever see or notice the change. They look at me like I'm crazy and have two heads when I mention some Affinity colors take time to develop.

It is always nice to hear that another person sees what I see. Thanks for chiming in!

We've pretty much locked-in on the color for our bedroom, but I will get a qt in the matte finish to make sure that we still like it in that sheen/finish (since the sample jar we used only came in eggshell). We've had the sample painted on the wall in a few places and kept coming back to it, so I know we like the color itself.

We did the same thing when choosing the white for the kitchen/LR/DR/hallway--narrowed it down using the sample jars, and then had the top 3 or 4 contenders mixed up in the Aura matte so we could choose from the actual paint (color, finish, etc.) that we'd be using.

While it may appear to ones eyes the paint may look richer, nicer, darker ; in reality one is just seeing the different aspects of internal lighting, external lighting, and the surrounding other elements in the room bouncing around.

The lighting conditions will influence the perception of color and color development

As far as a paint itself the particles fuse to form a film, and bind the pigment particles, as the product dries following application. The scattering and diffusing of pigments will indeed be less intense once the pigment particles bunch together and hence the number of effective scattering centers is diminished.

Also higher PVC paints will generally have fewer primary pigments. They will be less pronounced in a higher PVC paint (your lower sheen paints). The dry film will be more porous until the coalescing process has taken place.

Pigment types will definitely make a difference in the overall realm of the final color on the substrate. BM has proven this with their encapsulated proprietary waterborne acrylic colorants; thus sheen effects and scattering effects due to different types of pigments. Some pigments will diffuse scattering while others will have have a low index of refraction and very small particle size, so they don't contribute any scattering.

Lastly, in essence the lighting conditions does influence the perception of color and color development as the scientific chemical analysis of how pigments scatter, diffuse, bond, and cure on a substrate will react and is totally different, all the while seemingly appearing a color may be richer, darker,etc.