lazygardens, Highway Stripe Orange is how my builder described the color too! He tried to make me feel better by claiming it was growing on him but finally admitted it was pretty bad. Scarlett, we used Ivoire for the ceiling and it's lovely. I took lazygardens' advice and painted some swatches on large white sheets of poster board and checked them at different times of the day. I ultimately decided to go with SW Blonde, which coincidentally is the color my painter has in his own house. He said he'd painted it several times in spec homes and liked it so when he repainted his house, he used it. That made me feel quite a bit better. Anyway, he repainted my walls this weekend and hardly charged me much for the change. It is SO much better. I was worried it might be too neutral, but it still has a golden tone in most light. I don't have fixtures in yet, but as I tend to prefer warmer light bulbs, I imagine the lights will only enhance the golden tones which is what I want. I'm very happy with it. If anyone else is going for that South of France yellowy gold color, I recommend trying it. I almost went with SW Restrained Gold which is one shade darker on the same paint strip, but I'm glad I went with my first instinct. It's perfect. Oh, and for those who asked, the finish was and is eggshell. No problem at all covering the orange color with the new golden color. I'd say there was about four days between paint and repaint.

Thanks to all your wonderful ideas and for giving me a new perspective on our bath tile. Parma, I had to look up "moorish" -- and you're right -- how cool! As much as I agree with the tans/browns idea to disguise the tile -- dainaadele, your photoshopping was awesome -- I think I've decided to go outside my comfort level and embrace the uniqueness of this tile (like someone here mentioned) vs. disguising it. Plus, after 12 years with a brown bathroom (we had tan walls and brown rugs and towels), we're ready for a change. I went to BM today and had help finding "sweet innocence", a grey/blue tone vs blue/grey. I just put a second coat of sample paint on and I'll see if I still like it tomorrow, but I think it's a keeper. The idea of making the grout a darker color still interests me, but I have no experience doing this. What product would I use? Is it hard to apply? Are the results on such old grout consistent? Would it hold up in the shower? Maybe I should leave the grout alone if I'm going with the lighter wall color, yes? Laurie, the darker blue/gray color on the left is Lowe's Valspar Woodlawn Silver Brook (5001-1B). It has a green undertone that I hadn't realized til I put it on the wall. I've never worked with grey paints before and boy are they tricky! I'll post pics when I'm done to get your consensus as to whether I pulled off a moorish, contemporary, warm, and fresh updated master bath! :)

Generally, if a color is only a little off, I just leave it as it is, but if it's so off that it means a lot of effort to get it right, I just bite the bullet & repaint. It's less trouble and it's more predictable than going with an easy-but-messy wash or a labor-intensive dry-brushing technique over the existing color, neither of which procedures are guaranteed to fix things, anyway. I figure if you're gonna spend the time & effort, you might as well just start over and do it right. That's my advice. But in regard to your larger--and, unspoken--issue, here's an answer to a similar question that I posted to another forum just a few hours ago... ............................................. Well, since your husband isn't up to repainting your too-strongly-colored walls, this little tip won't help you much, but at least might help someone else. I've never paid much attention to that 'one-chip-lighter-on-the paint strip' bit, but then, I'm a fan of dark colors, so if a color came out brighter or stronger on the walls than what I originally intended, I'd probably still like it, or I'd just learn to live with it, anyway. I figure life's hard enough already without obsessing over a bit of color. I know a woman who's always repainting, and yet, despite all her hard work--and she's a total perfectionist--she's seldom satisfied with her results, either because the final color doesn't look like what she envisioned, or it doesn't look the same as it does at her friend's house--and, really, how could it? The chances of a single paint color (no matter how popular, or how beautiful) looking exactly the same in two different rooms or two different houses are about the same as the chances of a dress looking the same on two different women. Ain't gonna happen. The difference is that we KNOW it won't happen with the dresses, and yet we expect it to happen with paint. This does not compute. Anyway, this poor, frustrated woman once sked me how I managed to get the color "perfect" every single time, and I told her the secret of happiness: realizing that success with color doesn't depend on what's in the can but on what's in the mind. Or, as I put it to her, "The secret of contentment is setting your standards really low." And, of course, I was just making a joke, but it's true. If a color comes out darker than what I expected, I'm not in a big hurry to label it a 'failure'. Like they told us in sensitivity training back when I worked at Ma Bell, talk like that is hurtful: hurtful to the paint, yes, but also to yourself. Don't label, don't grade your efforts like that. Don't define yourself buy what you can't do. So instead of beating myself up over a 'wrong' color choice, I look at a situation like that as an opportunity for letting go: letting go of the narrow idea that there is only one 'right' color for your room, more importantly, letting go of the will-o'-the-wisp of "perfection" in the first place. Face it: we live in a sad, imperfect world, and the endless quest for a non-existent perfection--the perfect gold paint, the perfect granite, the perfect c*a*n*d*i*d*a*t*e, whatever--is doomed from the start. Besides, in these green, environmentally responsible days, I like to go with whatever solution requires the expenditure of the least amount of energy, and in this case, that would be my living with the color just as it is & not repainting unnecessarily. I mean, are MY energy resources less important that what's under a frozen tundra somewhere? I think not. Anyway, I've backed away from the urge to 'fix' a paint color often, and I can tell you this: it gets easier with time. BUT for those who are still merely thinking about painting--and for me, that phase can last for months--I can, at least, tell them to stop messing around with color boards that you have to haul around the room. The problem with a flat surface, no matter how big it is, is that you never get the cumulative effect that comes from color bouncing off & reflecting onto the adjacent walls, color that's getting stronger with every single bounce. That's how that subtle Wheaten Breeze that looked so ethereally lovely on the chip or on that sample board suddenly turns Screaming Mimi Yellow once it goes up on the wall. So you need to take into account that ricochet factor before you pick a paint color. Here's a trick I learned in interior design school: paint a 6x10 sample of paint on a flat board, and then paint the inside of a Kleenex box the same dimensions. Compare & contrast. You'll be surprised. You'll also never go back to flat color boards again. Regards, MAGNAVERDE.

Now that Sherwin Williams was brought into the discussion... If you go to a Sherwin Williams store during non-peak business hours, you may be able to get someone to work with you on a custom stain color while you're standing right at the desk. Downside is that most of the reps are better with paint than stain (more practice) but they can start with a clear base and sneak up on the color you want if you provide samples prepared just like the ones going into your home. Not sure how well that will work for you since you'd be dependent upon the rep's skill. I usually stay during the mixing process and instruct them about which pigments to add. Visually breaking a wood-tone stain color apart into its primary colors takes experience.