I agree.

Thanks El and dedtired, I thought of that, of course, but wanted to give the contractor some guidance. We don't necessarily want to pay for custom paint color, and was hoping that a ready mixed paint would be close. I called the local Sherwin Williams, and they said that Alabaster White was close. We may just go with that.

Yes, thats a popular chose and should do the trick.

Doubtful they will be able to make it for you or get close.

The reason paint colors are discontinued is because something changed in the formulation. A color is edited out of the collection because it can no longer be made with the new colorant and base formulations.

When Sherwin-Williams updated from the black plastic fandeck to the new gray Color Snap fandeck a few years ago, several colors were discontinued and that's why.

Sounds like the perfect opportunity to be bold and pick something completely different!

You won't pay more for 'custom color' just by asking SW to match the color. Are you trying to match a section on a wall -or just want to redo the room in a similar color? We had a similar situation at our lake house, where we didn't know the previous color and didn't want to do an entire re-paint of the open spaces that flowed into each other. Eventually, I was able to get a super-close match, which worked fine so long as I painted the whole wall.

This happened to us with Behr. If you have the color code, they should still have the formulation. This was the case for us. But the guy at HomeDepot told us that there were changes to the base color formulation that would be reflected in the final color. Sure enough, he was right. But the overall effect was very similar to what we had before. Since we had the house rewired, we were painting entire rooms and not patching color. I would expect you'll have a similar experience. There was no difference in the price.

A local hardware store I frequent can take a paint chip and put it through a computer(?) and mix a perfect match to the original color. I've done it plenty of times, esp. for my Tinkertown Green outside paint color I've used for years. I tend to misplace the paint can lid with the "recipe"on it and have to have the hardware mix it again.

Same thing happens with stain colors, btw.

Formulations change and colors have to be retired because it's not possible to match the original color targets with the new formulations.

From behind a picture, cut a swatch the size of a quarter coin. You only need the top layer of the Sheetrock. Take it to the paint store. They can match from that.

Thanks all, for the suggestions. We are going with alabaster white. This was previously a darkroom, and we are converting it to a laundry room, so matching the color isn't crucial. We just wanted it to be as close as possible. We didn't expect to have to pick paint yet, and, typically, today we just got the, " I'm coming tomorrow to start, what color do you want the paint to be", email.

Sherwin Williams White Flour is a close match to their Designer White...if I'm not too late to the party.