Gray sky.

Neither. first one is too blue, second one is too lavender based. you won't be happy w/that one at all!

see how metro gray looks next to a neutral gray like Silver Chain? can you see the lavender?

Try BM Calm. it's a better match for your grays. I've used it in my own home

You want the grays that are neutral. more of a silver/platinum gray. If you want to try some light green hues, bottom left are a few

but honestly, you have so much gray, why not warm up the room a bit w/a soft blush color?

the Abalone Shell is pretty. or any of the dusty rose colors. With a blush overdyed rug? looks so nice w/the darker charcoal tones. Hang a plant in the corner, maybe a few wood shelves or a teak stool

these add a bit of life to the sterile gray shades. instead of a gray that has a lavender base, use an acutal dusty lavendar or orchid color

I love these too. Try Perle Noir for the trim color, unless you want a dark wall.

Beth,

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I’m wondering if I messed up.

The tile looked so white on the floor and in absence of other color. Now on the walls mostly at night it has that yellow-green hue.

The cabinet is BM cinder. I understand color better by viewing RGB values. Viewing this, cinder is tinted with additional red and green making it ever so slightly warm. We tried metro gray because it was lighter on the same swatch. Likewise its RGB is tinted slightly towards red and green. This should make it slightly yellow. Metro Gray and cinder do look great together. Where we run into issues is when putting jt next to the greenish gray of the tile.

Your contrasting rose suggestion is very interesting and i love the idea of creating contrast. However, I cant see ending up with a pinkish bathroom. Is there any other ideas on ways to tie the color of the tile together with the cinder?

Here is a photo from earlier where i felt the floor and cabiners were really jiving. I’m not sure why I cant seem to make it come together since the same tile is on the wall.

@Beth H is giving you great advice. It's extremely difficult to coordinate whites, and let's face it, your grey's are so light that they are whites. It's amazing, isn't it, what happened to the floor tile when you brought it up the wall. I think it looks fine, so far. In fact, you should be pleased with yourself for such a good job coordinating your trim and cabinet color with the floor/wall tile! Many people would have tripped up earlier than you did! Trying to coordinate closely related "non-colors" is like negotiating a maze. Your investigation of BM Metro Grey was perfectly logical. If you hadn't already tried it I would have suggested it.

What colors are in your bedroom? This is a master bath, so it should connect with your master bedroom. Making that connection will make the two smaller spaces feel like one larger space. Not knowing what is in your bedroom, and just in case it also is grey…

White! Super White or Chantilly Lace. The purest white you can get, looks great with light greys. What a beautiful scene is a pale grey sky over a field of new snow. Is your ceiling white? Are your doors and baseboard white? How about the same white for your walls?

No? Well let's leave the doors and trim and ceiling white and add an dark evergreen forest in winter hybernation for your walls. Your floor tile is the perfect color for this scene. I'm thinking about Black Forest. How nice this would look with the wood details that @Beth H was talking about. What woods are in your bedroom? Oak? Finished how? Do you have wood flooring in your bedroom? What is it?

If not green, how about a dark blue? Blue and grey are a great combination! I would check out Bold Blue with yellow oak. For a more sedate feel, I would consider Old Navy with red oak. 

Whether these blues or the evergreen, thirsty white towels will look great. Also, white face plates for the fixtures are perfectly acceptable, but you could also have brass. What did you choose for door handles and other fixtures? Deep green and blues will go well with any metal, so you can mix. 

What do you think? What's in your bedroom? Your feedback will help everyone help you.

First off, beautiful bathroom--you've done a great job so far!.

I'd go in a different direction altogether. It's very difficult to match colors in the same value (lightness/darkness), especially neutrals where the underlying hue is difficult to discern. I'd go with a dark gray, something akin to your vanity. You have a lot of light tile on the floor and walls, so a dark color above the tile will be a nice contrast. B Moore Kendall Charcoal or Gray Gardens might work.

The problem with you showing colors online is that computers don't render color accurately, especially when dealing with nuances of these neutrals. What you see in your room and what we see on our monitors can vary wildly. And what is seen in one light (daylight, halogen bulbs, LED bulbs, etc.) can look different in different lights.

When I approach this issue with myself or a client, I gather lots of small samples to see what might work. Then I get large samples and place them in different areas of the room and view them at different times of day and night to select the best one. There's no substitution for viewing the colors on site.

I would try revere pewter if you see green in your tile. Its LRV is 55 so you will get some contrast without feeling dark and it reads gray/green so your tiles will appear whiter.

Beautiful bathroom! Another option, have you thought about BM Beachglass or BM Quiet moments?

I have a gray and white bath I did a year ago and painted the walls a very pale green, but I like green to begin with. If you don't, maybe that's not the right choice for you. If I were you I would be looking at greens and blues, but not dark colors, whites with just enough color for it to be noticeable, but not overpowering. The darker colors would be dramatic if that look appeals to you. The pattern in the tile is already making a statement, I wouldn't want to compete with it. Look at BM Healing Aloe. I used Woodland White, cut 50%. I have Cararra marble, so I don't know if either of these greens would work for you but it's something to look at if you want to branch out from grays.

You are saying that the white on the tile is looking yellow green, especially at night.

I am thinking that the gray in the tile probably matches well to the cabinet, which is a very neutral gray. The white on the tile has more yellow (yellow when desaturated goes green) or that your lighting has too much yellow.

That is the first mystery to solve.

What is the Kelvin or K value of your lighting. Are thay "Daylight" lightbulbs? If they are not daylight they will shine yellow. Other than surgical suites you seldom find anything over a 5000 k light. Most daylight bulbs are 4500-5000 and they use round numbers when rating the k values (usually they are listed at 500 degree increments.)

Natural daylight around 2:00 in the afternoon has a k value of 5000. Noon - the bluest light of the day is closer to 6500 and sunset and sunrise is where we hit the yellow and orange and pink light, lower k values.

The other thing to look at with lightbulbs is the CRI (this is getting better and better and as long as you are buying a name brand and not the generic you will most likely get a CRI of 90 or better - 10 years ago this was not the case and you had to search for a good CRI (Color rendering index).

Before you pick a color, I'd make sure you're LED recessed fixtures are at least 3500K with a color rendering index of 90+. I'm betting it's your lighting that's throwing off the colors.

After that, I'd pick a very soft gray/almost white paint color. Beth's suggestion of Calm is a good one.

If your lighting is good - Daylight lightbulbs from a major manufacturer, then it is time to move on to picking the perfect neutral.

If the tile actually has a bit of yellow you can make it look whiter by creating contrast. If you go too light on the walls it will either intensify the yellow look unless you pick a matching desaturated yellow/green/gray white for the walls that matches the white on the tile.

You also stated that you understand color using rgb values. I get it. I like numbers, but rgb is tough to translate. LCH is the preferred measurement for wall colors. Even with LCH (Light / Chroma / Hue) you need to understand that any color with a chroma (how much color vs how neutral the color) that is <5 can appear differently than the hue would suggest.

I have most (not all) of the BM and SW colors in a table. I pulled the color of your vanity, the colors you tested and some others that have the lch values I would be testing if I were looking for a gray color for your walls.

L - Lumanance/Light - how light or dark is the color

C - Chroma - how colorful vs gray is the color

H- Hue - where the color falls on the color wheel

Gray sky looks blue because it is blue. (Hue - 218)

Metro is off because it is too gray next to the tile. (Chroma - 0.17)

Beth has a good eye and suggested Calm. My gut says it may be too light, but it is the right hue range and has a low, but not crazy low chroma. Beth may have hit the nail on the head. (Chroma 1.78 and Hue- 84.13)

I can't see your room and internet photos are just not all that great to really get to the slight nuances of neutral colors.

I would probably test Nimbus or Abalone both a bit darker than Calm (L 82/83 vs 91) and have a bit more color - but chroma generally increases as you move away from white (100). Abalone/Nimbus are both around 3.5 vs 1.78) and the hue is in the same area for all three ( 84- 90) (Center of yellow is 87)

I would get the free paper samples for a bunch of these and take one of the tiles or a few outside around 2:00 in the afternoon on a sunny day and look at the paper samples next to the tile.

Natural daylight really helps us see the subtle colors - some are going to look really blue, really pink . . . and some are going to feel right.

I have been helping people pick colors for 25 years and I know there is a lot of disagreement on this subject, but the truth is that Mother Nature has the best lighting and if your interior lighting throws more yellow or more blue than Mother nature, it will impact everything in the room, not just the paint color. As long as you are looking at all the colors together you can test them outside and if they go together outside the colors will go together inside. If they look pink outside they will be off inside, if they look green outside they will look off inside. They usually won't be as noticeably pink or green inside as under natural daylight, but they still look like something is wrong.

These two tiles looked very much alike inside a home, but you can easily see that one is much more pink than the other in sunlight.

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I might also look for a darker blue green gray for the walls. This is the BM App rendition of your room with Stonybrook. Often colors look darker or lighter on the app than they do in your space.

It doesn't feel like you tried to match everything, but it works with the grayer grays and is dark enough that the white should appear whiter and not so yellow.

I just re-read your post, @sdiver2489, and saw that your cabinets are BM Cinder. Why not use that on the walls? It's a very neutral gray with a chroma of .2 And you already know it works with your tile.

Another note--just because a color is next to another one on a fandeck doesn't necessarily mean it's a lighter or darker version of the color next to it. With Ben Moore, the only way that would hold is POSSIBLY in the Color Preview collection, but even there you can't be totally sure.

First off, you are all amazing.

Thank you for the reassurance that the DIY nature of the design didn't result in a total screw up. I will admit that I do believe I maybe messed up (a little) when I assumed our tile looked like Carrera marble (to my untrained eye) and assuming that white and gray marble was white and gray marble (silly me).

So, I know that pictures don't always tell the picture and its difficult to get contrast, hue and color temperature right in a picture (I am a semi-pro photographer). So, I really appreciate all of you really digging into the pictures as best as possible to make your suggestions. Your comments were all so on point and I just want to say I appreciate you all lending your advice to help us!

To touch on a few points:

1. The can lights in there have selectable color temperature and I have them currently set at 3500K. I briefly had them at 4000K but felt perhaps that was a little too cool and sterile....its a fine line that's tough for me because I don't like overly warm light in a bathroom (unlike in a family room).

2. The yellow/green tones are definitely in the tile. This is where I said I kinda screwed up...the tile is porcelein emulating statuario tile. The "white" is a warm off white. The "gray" has some brown/green/gray tonality to it. The accent stripe contains what I believe to be carrera marble and it is slightly cooler with more a standard white/gray tonality. Separating the tile from the accent tile is marble pencil that varies from gray tones to warmer browns in some areas.

I posted this picture after discussing those colors I originally posted with my wife and I thought they were going to be winners so I was really disappointed when she felt they were off. I couldn't quite figure out why the bathroom tile was feeling suddenly so warm to my eye compared to earlier when the tile was only on the floor. I have included a picture earlier in the project where only the floors were going in and, to me, the floors seemed what I expected...with carrera white and gray.

So, long story short after diving into Beth's original comments I came to realize what my eye was doing. Early on in the project my eye was comparing the tile against the grey/black of the waterproofing substrate. This contrast made the tile feel brighter and less "off-white". Once the tiles went up the wall my eye compared it to the mostly primer-white of the walls and suddenly the tile became darker and yellow/green.

So, K L and Diana Bier hit the nail on the head with hitting up the darker tones. Knowing this, I took the tile and accent tile to BM and spent tons of time exploring darker tones. K L had touched on green and that is actually what worked color wise. Blues were too cool and didn't agree with the tile (even though it worked with the accent tile). Solid greens were too warm and didn't agree with the accent tile but looked good with the wall/floor tile. Blue-greens worked well with both. We came back home with Templeton Gray and, in addition, I had pulled grays of similar tonality compared to Cinder (like Diana mentioned) and brought home Storm.

Both look excellent at least on a swatch level. However as of right now my wife was super excited about Storm. So right now that is the plan but after re-reading all your suggestions, I think Stoneybrook is also interesting and may take another look at the tile with that....it may be slightly too warm.

I think why this was so hard for me is, being no interior designers, we usually have fairly dark wood/furniture in our home. So naturally we gravitate towards lighter tones. My general rule to date has been find the color you like and go two swatches up on the card to find the color you should actually paint (I realize the flaw in that regarding that the colors are not necessarily just lighter versions of themselves but you get the idea. I just think that philophy didn't work in this bathroom where the tile is a dominant feature and is light in and of itself. By painting the walls white it actually made the tile feel darker which wasn't my goal.

Beth,

Your comments regarding accessories is excellent. This has really gotten me thinking as I haven't done much on the accessory front besides mirrors. I am definitely taking your advice to heart and will try to bring in some natural tones that will "soften" the space and diversify the color palette.

I've also included a picture of my rendering I did of the bathroom in the design phase. The rendering is just my own CAD drawing so forgive the roughness of some features (like the lack of hardware). Just wanted you all to have a better idea of the finished space. The toilet area is blocked in the picture by the entryway door. This entryway door is changing to a barn door to remove this obstacle in the flow of the bathroom.

I wanted to add a shoutout to Jennifer Hogan as well. Thanks for taking pity on my love of RGB values and explaining the importance of LCH instead. I'm going to make an effort to understand colors better using that method as well! Much appreciated!

Hey @sdiver2489 since you're a photographer and want to understand color some more, you might want to view the website "The Land of Color." Lori Sawaya is a color guru who sometimes posts here, and her site is really fantastic!

https://thelandofcolor.com/color-freak/

You can get the RGB translation to LCH on a website called easyrgb.com. They also list all the paint colors from most of the major manufacturers.