When Paint Colors Go Wrong

I don't have the best track record for choosing paint colors. Oh, let's see, there are a few incidents that stand out.

-"Modeling clay" Green
-"This wasn't supposed to be" Yellow
-The time I painted the most muted, boring "accent wall" in history
-Boysenberry.

Oh, boysenberry. The color was actually called "Strawberry Daquiri". I really should have known.

See, I had a little alcove around my sink that I wanted to accent with a fun, unexpected color. I was going for this color....this reddish, mauvish, beige-ish color. Kind of like this. Except that's not the color I picked out. No. I picked the most angry pink on the planet. It was an accident.

 It was so much brighter than what I had planned. I just kept telling myself that it would tone down when it dried. Wishful thinking.
Keep in mind that this was the apartment I would share with my husband. Even then, he gave me pretty free reign over color choices, but I knew this was gonna cross the line. And when the whole wall was done, I realized that even an apartment full of girls wouldn't appreciate this wall. The color looked awful.

You can see the lovely texture of our walls in this photo. I'm not sure if it's a bad taping job, wallpapered paneling, or what. I just know that Boysenberry  Strawberry Daquiri made it look even worse.

Erik came home, stared at it, looked at me, looked at it, and said, "It looks so....angry!"

"I know", I said. "I'm going to fix it."

Now, I'm sure Erik thought this meant that I would take what was left of the Rafia Cream and cover over this glaring mistake. At the moment, I thought I might.

But I really wanted an accent wall. And I didn't want to go back to Home Depot again.

I still had a half quart of the hot pink goo, but could I redeem it? I looked around at the various cans of paint that sat on my kitchen floor. I had paint for other rooms, some neutral colors from the kitchen, and a few from my mom *just in case*. It turned out that this was the case. I opened one of the cans to find a deep, calm, grey-green-blue color.

I knew that I wanted to tone down the sharp red tones in the paint. Blue would do that. It only takes a few days in kindergarten to realize what red and blue create. So I dumped the calming color into the stormy hot pink and stirred with delight as I saw what was happening.

That's the look of delight, by the way. I rolled the purple I created over the angry wall and it became quieter and quieter. The color was actually an exact match to the little lines of purple in our linoleum floor. It was a thing of beauty.

Is paint-mixing the best way to achieve the color you want in your room? No. If you run out of your one-of-a-kind paint there's no perfect way to get it back. I know it's best to take home paint chips, tape them to the wall, and think about it. I've definitely done the whole "paint sample" thing, too. It's how we picked out the perfect gray for our living room in the house.

But look, I'm a paint mixer. I don't always have the patience for the paint-choosing process and sometimes I just pick a color on the spot. And when the color looks a little bit "off", I don't fret. I take a trip to the basement and spin the color wheel in my head. Then I start mixing.