Thanks Lori, I’ll grab one.

Check out SW sporty blue, it's a nice blue.

Over the years I have learned a lot about paint colors. On the West Coast there is a paint called Miller Paint, and they were associated with Devine Color, now have their own color line called Color Evolution that replaced Devine Color when that line was bought out by Valspar which was bought out by Sherwin Williams.

Devine Color and now Color Evolution were specifically developed for the Pacific Northwest where the overcast gloom can be overwhelming. Through following Miller Paint from the inception of Devine Color I was exposed to the Portland annual Design Week and many blog posts and design experts discussions on picking colors for the Pacific Northwest. I was surprised that they didn't want light and airy colors, but usually went with dark and/or rich colors and higher contrast to help fight off the gray clouds.

It actually makes sense - when you think of Oregon what colors do you see? When you think of Florida what colors do you see? When you think of New York City what colors do you see?

I think a deep rich blue with rich accents and white trim may be the perfect answer to your winter blues.

As for recommendations for colors I always start, like you, with a few samples, then decide if I need to go a bit more gray or more colorful, a bit warmer or a bit cooler.

I use a tool called easyrgb, and my eyes, to help get me where I need to be ( https://www.easyrgb.com )

You can look up a color and see what the similar colors are to a specific color and limit the selection to the brands you are considering.

The site uses a very high quality spectrophotometer to read colors from unused fan decks. Fan decks are printed using very good color matching technology and high levels of quality control, but they are not perfect and there is always some discrepancies, but it is a great starting place.

I also have a color muse ($50.00 tristimulous color matching tool) that is good for comparing two colors and will provide you with color matches to popular brands of paint colors. It is a $50.00 tool, so don't expect perfection - but again, it will get you close. If you have something that you own that is the color you are looking to match it is the only tool that most of us can afford that will give you the information needed to get close.

I have also sometimes used something as simple as excel to help me get to the right color. You can look up the RGB value - color two or three cells with the RGB Value, then change the color in one of the cells using the "More colors" option and the HSL option and I can make a color a bit less or more saturated, a bit lighter or darker, a bit warmer or cooler and then look up the new RGB value in Easy RGB and see what colors it suggests. Computers/monitors in general suck at rendering color accurately, but as long as I have something that I know I can move from that color to the correction and get where I want to be as a final result.

The best numbers to use to slightly alter a color is probably the LCH notation in EasyRGB.

Look up the color you like in easyrgb

Hit the convert button and you will see the LCH notation.

L = light (100 is white, 0 is black)

C =Chroma (0 is neutral gray and the higher the number the more colorful the color becomes)

H= Hue - what is the Hue measurement of the color

Red=18

Orange = 54

Yellow=90

Green=160

Blue=234

Purple=306

Blue Heron

CIE-L*Ch(ab) = 45.533 16.209 275.902°

If I then look up the two closest SW colors I get

Denim Blue - Just a bit less purple more true blue - just a bit more saturated - less gray and just slightly lighter

CIE-L*Ch(ab) = 46.929 16.932 270.463°

and

Luxe Blue - more purple - not the direction I want to go.

CIE-L*Ch(ab) = 45.501 18.259 279.397°

Before buying samples of anything more I use my eyes - take the chips into natural daylight and look at them next to each other to see if what I am expecting is what I am seeing.

Jennifer thank you so much for such a great explanation of how you do this. I'm definitely going to try it. I did just check denim and it looks pretty. On your other post you talked about dramatic colors. I do agree. My favorite color is the color of the sea on a stormy day. So that dark blue grey color. Well I guess it would depend on which sea. But we lived in OR and NY and I'd say both oceans during a storm.

Where can i get these curtains?