Choosing our paint color

Choosing the paint color for our home was a process. Since this is my first home, I never really had much liberty or experience in choosing paint colors. Growing up, my parents preferred muted colors. So when I wanted to paint my childhood bedroom, the wildest I was able to go was with a pale yellow. And when I say pale, I mean PALE. It was so light, you could only tell it was yellow when the sunlight hit it just right.



After my parent’s home, came college apartments and of course painting was not an option.


When I first purchased my home, the whole house was painted a light tan similar to this, but with a little less pink in it:

Paint chip courtesy of Glidden

Growing up with white walls, the tan was a BIG change and I was happy with the color. The only painting that needed to be done in my new house was in the garage and in the utility room. To bring some color into the room, I chose “ribbon yellow”. While it is a nice color, in certain light it can be a little electric. Needless to say, my paint color choosing was not on the right path. And this experience made me wary of choosing any more colors.

After being in my our home for 1.5 years, Mr. Moore and I decided it was finally time to paint. We knew we wanted to stay with a neutral color for future resale. With that in mind, we trekked to Home Depot and picked up any and all paint chips that looked like a remote possibility. Since we were going with one color throughout the house, we wanted a color that looked good with the cabinets, countertops, flooring, and of course one that we liked! After much thought, time and consideration, we limited the (hundreds) of chips down to three.

With the final three in hand, we headed back to Home Depot and had the sample size Behr containers (we went with Behr samples because we were going with that paint brand and because the sample sizes could be mixed to match any color) mixed up in all three of the selected colors. Let me tell you, this was the best thing we could have done! In my mind one color was the “winner” and I was certain we would be choosing it to paint our home. But once we got it up on the wall, it was horrible! I would have been very upset if we spent money on gallons of this paint and hated it. Luckily one of the other colors was perfect. It was a clear, no-brainer winner. I highly recommend trying the sample colors before committing to a gallon (or two or three).

Here is the color that we ended up going with:

Paint chip courtesy of Glidden

Now we just have to find the energy and motivation to finish what we started...