Different shades of grey

The title to this post is referring to picking out paint colors, which is forcing my hair to sprout various shades of grey.

I’ve been using Valspar’s color visualizer to test out different swatches because that’s Lowe’s private selection brand of paint — which is wallet friendly. (So is Olympic, but they don’t have an online color visualizer.) I think this whole process would be much easier if I trusted the color of the digitally painted room. It looks completely different from my monitor to Steve’s monitor, to even a physical paint swatch.

I think everyone assumes that picking out wall color would be easy for me because of my art school background, my job as a designer, and just my overall artsyness, BUT IT’S NOT. DON’T LET ANY OF THAT FOOL YOU. And if I didn’t loathe painting as much as I do I would just tell myself “Self, I’ll just paint over it if this color sucks.” I want to get this right the first time. There will be no do-overs.

So, without further ado, here are the colors I’m aiming for. And YES, smartypants, I realize that about half of them look like they’re the same color.

(I have this Notre Dame swatch, which looks blue-grey taped up on my wall. That sort of makes me want to pull my hair out.)

I think I’m just going to have to approach this situation with conservative logic: get really drunk, close my eyes, and point to a swatch.

Either that, or I’ll just have to shell out the $2.50 for a sample of each of these colors, and then actually paint them on the wall in small squares.

Does anyone have any advice on picking out paint colors for huge walls? Anyone? I’m reaching unhealthy levels of desperation here, people.