We have lived in this house for 2 years and 8 months. Choosing colors for the walls of each room has been a careful, ridiculously slow process. I have a 41/2” fan deck of all the colors of paint Benjamin Moore makes. Benjamin Moore brags about their color samples; small, nominally priced containers of their colors that contain enough paint for a 2’X 2’ square to be applied to a wall. This is a good idea. A color is only as good as the light that reflects it. One needs to see a paint color in the room where it is to be applied to make sure the light in the room is going to reflect the hue that jumps out at you from the fan deck. Yes, these paint samples are a wonderful idea in theory. The reality is that the particular color you wish to sample is never available in these small, nominally priced sample jars. I’m not sure what is available in those sample jars. Maybe those jars are full of the ugly colors that don’t sell very well. Maybe Benjamin Moore is hoping if they can get you to try the ugly colors, you will decide that they're not that bad and you can live with a minty mango kitchen after all.
I have painted four rooms on the ground floor of my house (kitchen, living room, dining room, family room), two rooms upstairs (The Goose’s bedroom and The Rascal’s bedroom) and I have yet to find one single color that I wanted to test in those little sample jars. And I have tested A LOT of colors. The unavailability of samples of the colors that are candidates for my walls translates into big dollars. Since they are not available in small, nominally priced sample jars, I have to buy a quart of the desired color in order to slap a little of it on the wall. A quart of Benjamin Moore paint comes to $13.77 after sales tax at my favorite paint store.
I am currently in the process of finding a color for the master bedroom. Here is what the “test wall” looked like last week.
I have painted four rooms on the ground floor of my house (kitchen, living room, dining room, family room), two rooms upstairs (The Goose’s bedroom and The Rascal’s bedroom) and I have yet to find one single color that I wanted to test in those little sample jars. And I have tested A LOT of colors. The unavailability of samples of the colors that are candidates for my walls translates into big dollars. Since they are not available in small, nominally priced sample jars, I have to buy a quart of the desired color in order to slap a little of it on the wall. A quart of Benjamin Moore paint comes to $13.77 after sales tax at my favorite paint store.
I am currently in the process of finding a color for the master bedroom. Here is what the “test wall” looked like last week.
I have found just the right color, but it took ten test runs before I found just the right one for the room. That’s $137.70 for all those paint patches. And that’s only ONE room!!!! I still have a playroom, three bathrooms and the front foyer to go. I need to start moonlighting in Vermont.
1 comment:
You need to join Painters Anonymous.
"Hi, I'm Yank, and I'm addicted to color selection" - (Hi, Yank!)
I'm married to such a person. I'm applying, next month, for Superfund status on my garage to remove the hundreds of quart cans.
;^)>
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