Just take a paint chip from the BM store to SW and you should be able to decide the closest color within a couple minutes.

SW will match it for you

If anyone has made these substitutions and can make a suggestion, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

I’ve always color matched at the SW store. I’ve never had an issue with the touch up paint though I understand your concern. I happen to be looking in front of me at a large 12x12 swatch of the Balboa Mist which I’ve just chosen for my bathroom. It’s a fabulous color. I ordered 12 samples (SW and BM) from samplize.com While you put a color in your cart, they render chip color samples right there. Try doing that while accepting their recommendations and putting other colors in. Are you looking at off white? Light Grays? What are you going for? The understones are all so different.

Have you tried calling your SW store and asking them to answer your question? Are you unable to get chips to compare yourself? Have you visited the SW website?

Benjamin Moore's Oyster Shell and Balboa Mist?

The closest SW colors aren't very close.

Oystershell 864 > Silverpointe SW 7653

Balboa Mist OC-27 > Pediment SW 7634

I was just looking at one of those match ups on a blog and it was so far off. We had SW color match our paint colors and it worked well. Didn't take them anything. they seem to have them programmed in somehow.

Here is BM Oystershell to SW Silverpointe

BM Balboa Mist to SW Pediment

These are very different colors even if they satisfy your request to get something close. Is this a new home contractor? If not, insist to the contractor you want to use the BM; I have done so in the past. I had an entire house painted in the BM Affinity palette and my painter was Mr. SW so he was grumpy about not using SW, but I was paying for it!

You were confident enough to pick the BM color right? So why the sudden worry you'll blow it by walking into a SW store with the BM paint chip, eyeballing it and asking for help from the SW expert in person?

I challenge the premise that the painter can't use BM. Then, if it's just a situation you can't work around, then I'd go to the SW store and get their advice. Either pick something with their help in person and so you can see if it's the right color overall, not just the undertones. Make sure it's the right brightness and color in the first place. Then, if you don't have something close enough you like from their standard chip, get SW to paint match. They have a really nice wall display of chips that make it kind of easy to get close range to your BM chip ...but do it in person, not online.

There's no guarantee down the road that any color - standard or custom - will be a perfect match later on even if it's the standard colors SW uses. The tones you originally picked are light so that helps. SW is so good at paint matching and it's a formula. Take care in how you store your leftover paint and test small areas when retouching if you have to get the formula again later on.

Here's a good article on why touch up matching is more than just about paint.

https://www.sherwin-williams.com/home-builders/services/paint-technology-and-application/sw-article-pro-howtogettouchup

I wish you good luck on this and hope you are happy with your results.

Hi Laura, I think that is well understood. I do the same. OP wrote the concern is down the road touch ups will be more difficult with a custom color match at SW. I don’t think that’s a big issue, because they can color match down the road, too.

I was hoping to get an expert opinion from someone who has a good eye for undertones and sees many different paint colors on a regular basis

:)

Of course I'm going to tell you to forget whatever you have in your head about "undertones" because it's a totally incorrect way to approach defining, describing and organizing color.

And "undertones" are especially useless in terms of comparing colors. Because the theory of undertones as most people apply it is just somebody looking at a color under whatever random light source they happen to have and GUESSING about what they think they see. Undertones are 100% subjective opinion.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think they have a "trained eye" and that their GUESS is qualified to label colors according to undertones for the rest of us to follow.

Um, yeah, no thank you.

But it's that arrogant subjective color opinion -that's only meaningful to the individual- that is responsible for all the confusion and chaos out there in blogosphere about paint colors.

The ONLY correct way to compare color is objectively. And how we do that is we measure it using a standard, consistent illuminant (light source) and compare data values and/or Munsell hue/value/chroma color notations.

I'll make up the Colorographies for the four colors so you can compare them properly. And we can discuss some realistic, manageable options for you to get the colors you want. BRB.

Here's Balboa Mist OC-27 compared to Pediment SW 7634

Here's Oystershell 864 compared to Silverpointe SW 7653

Bsolomon, have you seen Zircon or Big Chill?

I’ve been hoping for SW Silverpointe and SW Passive to have a color baby and I think BM Oystershell just might be that offspring!

Maybe. :)

Oystershell lands deeper into the Green-Yellow (GY) Hue Family. It's closer to Greeen (G) and it's lighter and brighter - look at Value and LRV to compare lightness and brightness.

Passive has the least amount of Chroma out of the 3. Which could explain the blueness. Chroma quantifies colorfulness/grayness, clean/dirty, vivid/dull

I always find it curious that painters won't just buy the paint from the brand that we (clients) choose. I realize they have favorite brands they like to use but SW and BM are both top brands and, as this discussion is showing, don't have exactly the same colors. I totally understand OP's desire to stick with a defined color rather than trying to color match down the road for touch-ups.

@carladr, almost always it's about volume and money. Sometimes it's about preference for actual product.

What do you think their color baby is?

Cliffside Gray BM HC-180

Grey Star GL 30GY 65/020

Grey Star is an old Glidden color. A PPG Store or The Home Depot should be able to track it down. It's on leaf 156 in the old ICI The Master Palette fandeck, not the Dulux for Professionals fandeck.

And def grab a chip of Oystershell to try too.

Came across this thread while looking for equivalent of Balboa Mist at Sherwin Williams. There is a website called encycolorpedia.com that provides you with all kinds of helpful information about colors, including what equivalent colors are called at different manufacturers. Hope this helps