Grey paint mistake

Folly1001

Hi. I've bought a new house and want to paint many of the downstairs rooms pale grey. I've spent a fortune on testers but each one either looks too blue, pink, yellow or green - I've even ended up painting my kitchen pale blue by mistake as the tester looked grey - I can't find the perfect grey! Any suggestions?

PasturesNew

There are two issues here:

1] Finding the grey you want
2] That grey looking right in the various different lighting situations

If your problem is [1] then there are apps where you take a photo of something you pass in the street, see in a magazine, that's "the perfect shade", then go into the right manufacturer's shop and they'll make you the colour. Google for it to find out which paint manufacturers do this. It'll be a few bob more, but it'll be the right grey

[2] is harder as you might then have the perfect grey paint, but when you paint it in your rooms it'll still look wrong as the light's different.

gadjah543

Have a look at a Farrow and Ball colour chart. They do lots of different shades of grey and also tell you which looks best according to the position of the room. If you want to be really money saving then most paint shops will be able to mix the colour from the chart but personally I like the chalky look that you get from the real paint.

Doozergirl

I'm not the first to say this already - Farrow & Ball. They do sophisticated greys, not colourful chemically ones. No one does it like them. All of my grey walls have been F&B.

You'll notice the difference.

I_have_spoken

http://www.littlegreene.com/paint/collection/grey?limit=all

27col

I think that you will find that there are 50 shades of grey.

mart.vader

Thanks 27col for the chuckle !

OP, just use battleship grey - It's mse.

Si_Clist

I've spent enough years working in a paint laboratory and subsequently as a professional photographer to assure the OP that ...

1 Taking a picture of something, showing that picture to somebody and then asking them to match the shade is very unlikely to get you anywhere. There are simply too many variables involved.

2 The OP's eyes might well be like many people's and be a bit wonky when ti comes to colour discrimination (which is not the same as colour vision). There's a simple check here
(a perfect score would be zero, btw.)

3. How the paint tester looks on the wall depends on several factors including how long since you applied it, what light you're viewing it by, whether that light is all from one source, your angle of view, etc. - even down to how tired you are and whether you're hungry.

4. It's even possible that an emulsion paint applied by roller might look different in some circumstances to the same paint applied by brush.

And that's not even the complete list. My best advice to the OP would be to stop trying for the perfect colour, and just go with something she can live with

blackshirtuk

My wife also spent a fortune on testers looking for the "right" kind of grey, and many hours looking in the shops.

It is actually very subtle, but looks great

http://www.lauraashley.com/uk/paints/water-based-paint-dove-grey/invt/dovegreypa

lstar337

This reminds me of Red Dwarf.

Rimmer makes the scutters repaint the hallways from Ocean Grey to Military Grey. Of course the two greys are completely indistinguishable.

pinkpiglit

We've used bog standard Egyptian Cotton by Dulux for our lounge. It's a very pale shade of grey and looks great in our north west facing room.