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sweetestbliss

Looking for painting tips asap!

sweetestbliss
11 years ago

I have been in the process of searching for the perfect neutral tan for quite some time.

The room I am painting was originally a medium to dark tan (Valspar Tawny to be exact) I am wanting to go a few shades lighter to open up the room.

Long story short, I painted 5 out of 7 walls in my room with a color I thought was the perfect match, a (What I thought at the time) was a beautiful light tan. It turned out to be a light pink instead. Just my luck! I stopped painting after I realized the color was nauseating.

Several weeks later and I find a color I love, Laura Ashley's Taupe 3, same tint and undertones as the original color on my walls but a few shades lighter, just what I was looking for. I bought a sample and tested it out on my walls. When I paint over the darker beige original wall that I didn't paint- the sample color looks great! Just like it looks on the swatch. However, when I paint the sample color over the light pink walls I painted, the sample paint looks grey and green and yucky. I painted a white piece of cardboard to hold up to the wall to see if it was the lighting causing this effect but the piece of cardboard held up to the icky wall looks perfect. Why is it doing this? I am so confused.

Any ideas or something that I'm missing?

Comment (1)

  • PRO
    Lori A. Sawaya
    11 years ago

    One coat or two?

    Most paint sample boards - or what people use as make-shift paint sample boards - are white.

    Many incorrectly believe it's necessary to start with a white surface to get true hues. White hinders more than it helps because it adds an unrealistic undercurrent of brightness and whiteness that is off the average value strata of interior and exterior paint colors.

    Paint samples should be prepared on neutral grey material - never white. Like you, the majority of people don't start out with stark white walls so why start out with stark white sample boards?

    Two coats of high quality paint *usually* even things out - at least to and acceptably close range wall to sample, sample to wall, wall to wall.

    You have a darker beige substrate as one reference, a painted piece of white cardboard as another reference, and then the pink beige walls as a third.

    Mix all that together with the ever-changing inherent qualities and characteristics of light and there's a lot going on to sort out and visually organize, categorize and determine. Just reading about it feels like a lot to me.

    Need to come around to a neutral, zero point of color reference and edit down some of the extreme visual leaps created by different colors of substrate. Because one coat or two, it's obviously messing with your perception of the one color. And you may have a highly attuned color sense that despite two full coats, you're still feeling and seeing. It happens.

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