Double thumbs up to Lori for sharing a lot of good knowledge on color science. Some of the regional paint companies will have their paint chips organized very similarly because they are part of a trade group that creates the chipsets for them. I'm not sure if Dunn-Edwards is in one of this organizations though. Adrienne, I don't see any harm in trying to get the offending area repainted. It sounds to me like someone used the wrong formula, on that second color, or the database came up with a match and that second formula was used for some reason. I have some insight into the paint side of this. There is a database of tint formulas for all of the colors on the chip racks, as well as a way to match color samples that the customer sends in. Humans usually check these databases to make sure the formulas make sense. The formulas are also optimized to use less expensive tints. 90% of the time, the customer wants some form of white, gray or beige, so the paint is typically tinted with some combination of black, red oxide, yellow oxide, or raw umber. Magenta and gold/medium yellow is typically avoided if possible due to higher cost and lower durability (sadly, brighter organic pigments don't last as well as the oxides).

Why does it have to be soooo hard to choose color?! It's madness, I tell you! I have the same dilemma, little natural light, plus low 8' ceiling. Bought 13 samples from SW (yeah, you do the math!), still can't make a decision :( I was going to suggest SW Amazing Gray, but if you don't want Worldly Gray you probably wouldn't be happy with it either. I thought maybe something with brown or yellow undertones to keep the "blue" away? SW Agreeable Gray read too bluish on our walls as well, so I didn't even bother trying Repose Gray. My favorite gray turned out to be SW Colonnade Gray, it looks beautiful in our [dark] space, but not for the whole house. SW Mindful Gray was a good contender too, but I think overall we need something a bit more beige-ish. Next sample I'm planning to buy will be BM Edgecomb Gray color-matched by SW. It's my favorite in pictures and it seems to go with everything. I also love SW Light French Gray in pics! Please, please, let us know how it turned out... pictures pleeeease!!!

That’s exactly what I’m looking for-warmth without going yellow. I’m sure you’ve read about the northern light adding a chilling effect to the room. What’s the reason for not using BM? My contractor said they prefer BM but would be willing to use a different brand if we wanted to, and I am having a hard time selecting the main color in BM (I have tons of sample paint already). SW has paint consultants that charge you to come out and help select your paint colors and then reduce that charge when you buy the paint. I haven’t heard of that with BM so I am trying to hire a paint consultant to help me. Or hiring an SW consultant and just have them match the BM paint to an SW color. Paint is a big decision! I’m putting in a white oak flooring as well.

why do you think that Ben Moore and Sherwin Williams don't post the color information on their paint chips like Glidden does? Oh, gosh. Lots of thoughts on this. Will try to keep it as short as possible. First, all paint brands already have these data values and notations for every color - they couldn't MAKE paint colors without it. It's that color DNA I'm always talking about. Sherwin-Williams used to share the Munsell notations for all their colors. Learned this from a color scientist who used to work for SW - and I acquired that original PDF. We don't use the SW Munsell notations, however, because we do our own here at The Land of Color. Just because I have major control issues when it comes to the data - it has to be perfect. The Glidden notation is their own proprietary color system developed in 1978. It has its own color wheel, and LRV and Chroma scales. It's all published in the front of The Master Palette fandeck. Their proprietary system is different from the Munsell color notations I like to use. Munsell is my favorite for several reasons but mostly because I've used it for so long it's second nature to me. Glidden's system is a damn good order system. It is the first and, one and only, color system designed specifically for architectural coatings. Its formal name is the Acoat Codification System. So, yeah, color order systems for paint colors specifically have been a thing for 42+ years. All things considered from a color science perspective, I think paint brands choose to talk about undertones, color trends, and forecasts because they are intangible - no one is ever wrong talking about undertones, trends, and forecasts because you can make up whatever you want; there's a kind of banal safety in the inherent subjectivity of each one. They don't have to hire anybody with any special color knowledge or experience to market their paint if they focus on intangibles like undertones, forecasts, and trends. Because, again, everybody is making it up as they go anyway. When you get into the color science, data values/notations in particular, that's a special skill set. You can't just make up whatever you want when it comes to the science of color, how color really works, because there's 100+ years of well-researched and well-documented sources and standards to reference about all things color spaces and systems. And anybody can Google and find it - all of it. Before I publish ANYTHING anywhere, I like to have 3, academic level, quality sources to cite in my back pocket. I don't do Wikipedia and I'd eat nails before citing a blog as a source for color information. When you're speaking to color in such evidence-based, tangible terms, when you're talking about quantifying how the human eye sees color, you have to know what you're talking about. Because it's science. It's physics. It's psychophysics. I suspect that's more work, responsibility, and accountability than paint manufacturers are capable of dealing with. The murky world of undertones, trends and forecasts is cheaper, easier. And, honestly, probably more fun to spin in the intangibles and espouse opinions with reckless abandon, giving zero !@#$s if it's accurate or not. The problem is, it's 2020 and the color tech tools like Color Muse, NIX, Color Reader is making the science, an evidence-based approach to color - data values specifically - available to anyone who knows where to look for them in the apps. Which means more and more people are learning about the color systems that have been around for 100+ years and want to know why the frameworks of color data values and notations have been unshared. I will say this, whichever paint brand is the first to "get it" when it comes to an evidence-based approach to color and publishes Munsell notations on their apps, website, and paint chips, is going to win not only the internet but paint world in general.