Ooooo -- finally a post I can help with.

We are painting our basement dark purple, basically copying a room we saw at our local ikea store. The IKEA room was BM's Cabernet but we chose SW Expressive Plum. I will post pics of both the ikea room and our basement, but our basement is obviously a work in progress. I will say that the flash seems to be distorting the pics a bit - the paint in both rooms looks a lot more grape-juicey-purple than it does IRL.

One other caution - we've noticed the paint scuffing a lot in the basement, though we only finished painting it a few weeks ago. I called the paint store to complain and they said that some colors are just more prone to that. They suggested repainting with a more durable paint like Duration Home (I used the ColorAccents that the guy recommended and it WAS NOT CHEAP ($38/gallon) and he said it wouldn't burnish, so I'm kind of PO'd that they're now telling me to redo it in even more expensive paint that supposedly also doesn't burnish.) But I would just caution you that dark purple (and I guess any dark color) may mark up when you touch the walls.

Anyhow, here's the pics - IKEA room first then our still-in-progress basement.

Not a very good pic--in low lighting with only my cell phone--but here is the dining room in the house we're building. The color is SW 'Soulmate'. We looooove eggplant, too, and just had to have it somewhere. Inside the ceiling tray, the color is SW 'Blonde'....wish I'd used darker to be more gold. I love the combo.

Oh my...these are lovely. I love purple in all it's deep, rich forms. I'm going to be painting something that lovely Soulmate color.

I'm very sensitive to light and dark...would this color be too dark for the winter months?

If the Gardenweb search is working today :^), try looking for "Mistybear"...she had a house full of purple that was lovely!! Also, "johnmari" has pictures of the pretty living room in her old house that was the paint color "wet concrete"...a beautiful greyed lavendar.
HTH

Lkplatow - you have a really nice color palette in your basement with the plum and gold.... About the burnishing, I had the same issue in my previous home with a dark red paint on my dining room walls. I thought painting a dark color would hide all the scuff marks from the kids... Boy was I wrong. We had also used a SW paint. In our current home we painted our breakfast/sunroom in red. We went ahead and paid more money for the Benjamin Moore Aura paint to prevent the burnishing. This room gets way more traffic than the dining room in my old house, and we have had no issues with burnishing whatsoever - even with 5 kids!

Tracey b - I LOVE that SW Soulmate color! I'm thinking that might work in my master bath someday. It really complements the light fixture and flooring in your dining room : )

Wonderful colors. Our front door is a deep purple, but I am definitely going to find a place for 'Soulmate'. Master bath maybe. I like your 'expressive plum' and the Ikea shots, too! Thanks!

We used Benjamin Moore's Desert Shadows for the wall surrounding our basement stairwell, so it serves as an accent through the foyer, dining room, living room, etc. I love the color. It's more of a purple-brown--definitely eggplant in some lighting, but looks more chocolatey in other light. Here are a couple of pictures from last fall.

Wonderful colors. Our front door is a deep purple, but I am definitely going to find a place for 'Soulmate'. Master bath maybe. I like your 'expressive plum' and the Ikea shots, too! Thanks!

The expressive plum in our basement is actually one shade darker than soulmate on the same paint strip - soulmate was one of the test quarts we sampled but my dh was afraid of it going a bit mauve-y with our lighting so we went one shade darker. That's what I mean about the flash distorting the color. If you picture the soulmate (which is gorgeous in your dining room, Tracey!) maybe 10-20% darker, that is what the expressive plum really looks like.

And hey, if you want 4 color test quarts of SW purples, including soulmate and expressive plum, just let me know, LOL!

Pass those samples over here, girlie. LOL

Too bad you aren't my next door neighbor, I'd take them right off your hands.

wow! thanks so much to all of you! your posts gave me the EXACT info I was looking for...and even though it doesn't seem like I'm going to win out and get to have purple in my main living space, I'm thinking I've gotta find a way to work it in somewhere. LOVE it.

I thought I recognized "Expressive Plum" (name). The front door on our last house was the prettiest eggplant color--very close to Expressive Plum, but we thought it'd be too dark for the DR. We sampled SW "Socialite", too, but it leaned towards the mauve side while I thought "Soulmate" stayed the shade I wanted. I knew I couldn't go any lighter without it becoming lavender, and we didn't want that.

I was talking to the head painter when we were standing in the foyer looking into the DR. The painter said one of his guys said to him after they'd finished it, "I know it's purple....but it's pretty." Sounds like a guy who didn't expect to ever like purple.

We thought of this color for our bath, too (we "re-used" several of our colors in other rooms), but it's too dark in there with only 1 NE-facing, frosted window, so we put a light sage green in the bath, and I have eggplant towels from the last house to use, so there's my purple fix in there.