Paint on walls dried much darker than tester!!

cubegame

Can anyone shed any advice on this one?

We had our stairway plastered before Christmas and have now got around to painting it.

We'd chosen our colour based on a tester pot which we used on a piece of plasterboard and had chosen a nice chocolate brown.

We bought the paint and I have spent most of today putting the first coat on, but having finished it looks so dark and we really hate it!

Having just picked up our plasterboard tester and compared it side by side it's very obvious that the colour of the wall paint is different and much darker. It also has much more evident sheen to it.

I guess it COULD dry out lighter but the areas which were painted 5 hours ago seem just as bad.

Just wondered if anyone else has had experience of this and if the paint manufacturer was helpful in any way.

Thanks

SplanK

our red feature wall went through several stages of colour before it settled down!!! I would do at least 2 coats and give it a day or 2 to properly dry... there are various things that could effect colour - such as previous chemicals or paints that were on the wall... also the tester might be matt where as you may have used silk - i was never able to find a matt or silk,.... just a tester colour!

I do find that testers are only a guide to the colour and may not represent the overall colour of the proper painted wall once done - its just there to give an overall idea!

cubegame

SplanK wrote: »

our red feature wall went through several stages of colour before it settled down!!! I would do at least 2 coats and give it a day or 2 to properly dry... there are various things that could effect colour - such as previous chemicals or paints that were on the wall... also the tester might be matt where as you may have used silk - i was never able to find a matt or silk,.... just a tester colour!

I do find that testers are only a guide to the colour and may not represent the overall colour of the proper painted wall once done - its just there to give an overall idea!

Thanks. We'll keep our fingers crossed. There shouldn't be any problems with chemicals as the wall was newly plastered and had the same treatment of a coat of diluted white emulsion as the tester plasterboard.

The tester was definitely matt as was the pot of paint we used.

wallbash

Just a thought ,
tester on Plasterboard...... paint on plaster??

cubegame

wallbash wrote: »

Just a thought ,
tester on Plasterboard...... paint on plaster??

Both of which had been given the same basecoat.......

savemoney

If its emulsion you can lighten it down with cheap white emulsion and repaint. The only problem with that is you need to make sure you have enough to go round if its hit n miss or you will have to measure the amount you put in to a container compared with the colour

cubegame

savemoney wrote: »

If its emulsion you can lighten it down with cheap white emulsion and repaint. The only problem with that is you need to make sure you have enough to go round if its hit n miss or you will have to measure the amount you put in to a container compared with the colour

Sounds a bit risky to me.

Last night we actually slapped some of the paint we put on the wall next to the tester paint on our plasterboard sampler. This morning it is obviously a different colour.

I'm more worried about the shiny finish on the walls though. If it's incorrectly labelled silk bang goes our nice walls.

craig777

I never trust tester pots anymore... very few of them actually match the colour of the real thing I've found.

You'd of thought it would be a fairly simple task to get a tester pot to match an actual pot. Why it's so hit and miss, I don't know.

Debt_Free_Chick

cubegame wrote: »

I'm more worried about the shiny finish on the walls though. If it's incorrectly labelled silk bang goes our nice walls.

Are you saying it IS labelled as silk? If so, then it would have a sheen and in my experience the level of sheen can vary from one manufacturer to another.

cubegame

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Are you saying it IS labelled as silk? If so, then it would have a sheen and in my experience the level of sheen can vary from one manufacturer to another.

No. It's labelled as Matt, which is what we wanted.

Traveller1981

Can't you just buy more paint if it is the wrong colour?

I used a lovely shade of brown called choc chip from Crown. Go to the crown site and they send you 5 free testers (A5 bits of paper painted in the colour). The actual paint we bought was a spot on match to the sample they sent us.