Paint Colors

I've had several questions about paint colors. I have always had such a hard time picking out colors from a swatch that translated well when applied to an entire wall. Recently I've gotten a little better at this with Sherwin Williams colors but for most of the rooms I have painted I have taken advantage of color matching. The color for our bedroom and bathroom in the Alabama house were taken from a pillow sham. I custom mixed the blue for the kitchen/dining room, the green for the nursery, and the tan for the hallway/living room from samples when I couldn't find just the right shades I wanted. If you are having a hard time finding your perfect color and think you could mix one, go ahead! I had a hard time with the green in the nursery because it seemed like the colors were either too limey, too bright, or didn't have quite enough yellow in them. When I combined a few colors and added some white I got just what I wanted. Make sure to test your color on the wall and let it dry before deciding. Paint a scrap piece of drywall or even a piece of paper to take to the paint store for them to match. Then hold on to your paint formula and you can buy the color for as many projects as you need!

This is the color we used in our bedroom and the bathroom:

This is the color we used for the kitchen and dining room:

I don't know why I wrote "dark" on there but you can just ignore that.

For all of our trim and our white cabinets we used Valspar Swiss Coffee (formerly Sawyer White). I am now using Greek Villa by Sherwin Williams as the white in our new house. For the black on our French doors and our cabinets we used Black of Night by Sherwin Williams.

I can't find the formulas for the living room tan or the nursery green but if I come across them I will definitely post them.