As in—shades of adobe. Which (a light version) is what the kitchen is. After looking through every paint chip in Spokane, we settled on a color from Benjamin Moore, which went perfectly with the cabinets we are not now getting.
By sheer luck and the fact we had to match other things, it still does go well with the other cabinets we ARE getting.
But—we need a lighter shade to go with it. We picked out a color called ‘soft music’ —which on the chip is a sort of apricot. We optimistically bought a gallon of it. When it went on the wall, it was flaming pink. Which is horrid next to adobe. Would it dry closer to color? Nay. It got worse.
So—back I go, to Ace, from whom we had bought this Kensington-Clarke ‘soft music’. They tried again. The mix was still baby bottom pink. I suggested they analyze their own color chip with their color-matching device, and it showed something different than the colors the machine was putting into it. Oh, joy. They tried matching it, but it was a dead dull color still slightly pink. So back I go this time with a painted strip in our MAIN color, and ask them to analyze that and match it. Well, it sort of works. A color called ‘something peach’ sort of goes with it in a lighter way—and so we are testing that on a strip WE are going to take to Lowe’s to compare to the door sample of the cabinets we ordered, to be sure that the minute difference in tones is not going to be godawful…
I am getting very weary of driving to Ace. I am getting even wearier of paint matches that don’t, and they are calling Kensington to tell them that their computer program has a glitch in it on this one color—the one we need. What, in all the paint chips in Spokane, are the odds that we would pick the one color I have EVER seen that far off from what it’s advertised to be? And Adobe is a pure bear to try to match. So we are hoping with two paints of the same brand and base that they WILL go ok with the doors, or we will be back at it again.
Much as I’d like to say something helpful and supportive…naah, dealing with paint matches that don’t match is just a pain in the butt and there’s just no getting around it. My place, being small, is all a colour that looks white until you see actual white next to it. It is actually very light vanilla. The sometimes quite pronounced colour schemes of the various rooms are due to the accents; soft furnishings, floors, and of course all the books.
What is worse I would remind you, is when you get the perfect paint colour you want, install it proudly, then forever more have to deal with visitors who come in, wince and get very polite and diplomatic.
To all the Canadian salads: Have a happy Thanksgiving! Everybody else, please disregard the previous sentence.
If you don’t need too awfully (bad word choice there) much acrylic craft paints do pretty good accents.
And, yes, you must be picky and not settle for “almost a match.” A color that is totally wrong is one thing, but a color that is just slightly off is the visual equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. No. Just, no.
Personally, I think a light turquoise would go lovely with adobe, and would work with grey, too, says the time-warped lady living in the 1970’s with avocado countertops and harvest gold cabinets and appliances. (My mom thinks this duplex is just adorable, sunken, wood-paneled living room and all.) I would paint this place in a New York minute if the landlady would let me.
Pray for us now and in the hour of our death… Thanks to a suggestion from DH, I may be attempting to build our own sectional sofa. This afternoon we cruised around and checked out several furniture stores, and nearly fell over from sticker shock. $2000 — a — section?!? We may be dangling out here at the far end of the Pacific supply chain, but that’s just death by shipping.
If I build my own, there are several interesting looking plans online for 2×4 furniture, and I can include storage units under the seats, which is generally wasted space.
Regarding your paint troubles, if you want a lighter accent color, perhaps get a gallon of your original color and cut it by half with an off white; at least you know it is in the same color family that way. Alternately, I’ve heard several suggestions for a contrasting color as accent.
From May 1984 – April 1988, I lived even further out on the supply chain: Guam. Almost everything had to be imported onto the island.
Got a suggestion for you: go to a thrift and buy a few tatty but solid furniture sections—they’ll be close to the same height, because that’s the way furniture is—then strip them down to their wooden frames and do any alterations you want by adding and subtracting bits. Then design your padding and springing. You can still get cotton batting at a fabric store, which makes a more durable ‘sit’ than going all. Getting the frame built is a huge part of the battle, I’d think, and the soft bits can be padded to resemble each other.
CJ and Jane, can you get a copy of their color definition for “Adobe” and the other colors you’re considering? I’d guess that Jane and you know enough about computer color definitions to be able to tell if/why their software is glitching on mixing the right match. I would presume they have between four and six base pigments and a base medium they use to create custom paint mixes. (white, black, cyan, magenta, yellow, most likely). But either a CMYK or an RGB, or even an HSL or HSB/HSV definition likely could tell you enough to get some idea what’s going on behind the scenes. Just an idea.
I get the feeling what you’re going for is a stucco color, a very pastel, creamy white tint of terra cotta, or somewhere between red ochre and yellow ochre with a lot of white, but toward the red-orange more than the golden / sunshine yellow or yellow-orange? Would an ice cream vanilla work with the copper and redwood you had chosen?
WOL’s suggestion of a pale turquoise, maybe very pale, could work also. Red-orange and cyan-blue are near opposites on the color wheel, so playing with those and light / dark for contrast would work, plus it fits a Southwestern vibe.
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Chondrite — ooh, yikes, that sounds…yeah, that’s…wow. I had seen furniture prices here for new furniture, and man, it’s outrageous on the mainland too. — Are there local furniture makers you could find and get an affordable deal from? DIY sounds cool, if you’re handy with other building projects. I know my mom destuffed and recovered old dining room chairs and did a fine job, so it’s doable. It’d require the furniture frame, the padding and whatever they use to glue and/or state the padding in, with webbing or casing around the padding, then doing the upholstery covering over that. — I wish I was handy with things like that, but I don’t have the knack, and my eyesight interferes. (I can do some stuff, and would get better with practice, but you want something that looks good and is well made at the get-go.) Wow, good luck! Baji-naji! Heh.
I remember the adventures in paint we got when we moved while I was in HS. The previous residents had painted the walls in the living and dining room apparently with the intent to match the knotty-pine panelling they had on two walls – they used a color called “Granada Gold”, and my mother described the effect as “like walking into a pumpkin”. Upstairs some of the walls were “institutional aqua”, with the doors divided corner to corner and done alternating gold and aqua. The master bedroom had sandalwood-pink Formica in the vanity, and they’d tried to match that in pain, with the closet doors also using black…and red shag carpet.
We redid the living and dining room with pale green walls – as pale as could be mixed, and in some lights it looked pale blue – and the master bedroom, being a darker area, got a sunny yellow – Lucite “Sunshine Yellow” was gorgeous, glowing yellow, but it would not stick to the previous coat, even with sanding, so we ended up with one less bright.
We experienced exactly the same problem in our den. Pink was NOT the look we wanted. In our case, I believe the natural light played a large part, especially when paired with the multi-colored brick on the fireplace wall.
I probably played 15 or 16 colors trying to get a brick match. Finally, I just matched the concrete color grout between the bricks. Somehow, that works.
A few years later I nearly drove myself nuts trying to match a color in our Silestone counter – I finally found it, but the contractor decided I really wouldn’t like such a saturated color on the walls. He chose a shade 2 steps lighter – I was NOT amused. At that point, we’d been without a kitchen for 3 months – I just wanted everything DONE!
An old quilter’s trick is to pick a print fabric, then find the colors within the print, then step up or down a few shades in the colors. Waverly fabric even shows those colors on the selvedge.
Jane says, and I believe her, that blue is often in a white paint base. Since THEIR formula said ‘add a dash of blue’, and orange (a component of apricot or adobe) is a combo of yellow and red, my notion is that the yellow was too little, the blue was too much, and the white base containing blue got more of it, and the blue hitting the yellow made green which knocked back the orange into irrelevance…It was screaming cotton candy pink, loud pink.
They frequently have a “warm white” base and a “cool white” base. If they use the wrong one, that would make it worse.