Picking a paint color
I am notorious for bringing home a hundred paint swatches and taping them all over the walls. Then going and buying a gallon of paint. Then hating the paint color once it is up on the walls. I am not sure that I have painted any room and loved it the first time around. And yet, I continue doing it.
The worst in recent memory was a yellow I picked for one of our downstairs powder rooms. I wanted a soft buttery yellow. What I ended up with was something which was reminiscent of what should be in the bowl, not on the walls. I went over it several times with different yellow paint, until I gave up and swore off yellow paint forever.
Recently a friend of mine, who was completely confused by the myriad of paint swatches she had put all over her bedroom walls, hired a designer to come over and help her chose the right color. She was able to tell the designer a general color scheme that she wanted and point to her ill-fated attempts on the walls. The designer looked at the green swatches and immediately went to her extensive fan decks of paint colors and picked the perfect color. And a perfect color is one that looks good ON the walls, not in the book.
Consultants from their International Association of Color Consultants North America (IACC-NA) are here to help. Their fees range from $60 - $200 per hour. Which sounds expensive until you consider the cost of all those ill-fated gallons of paint that average $30 a pop.