Feeling blue about my grays

And I'm not talking about hair!

Since we moved into this house I've been wanting to incorporate some gray to what was an all-beige wall color scheme. I regularly read TONS of home design blogs and know (or should know) that choosing gray can be tricky because:

1) grays have distinct undertones--blues, greens, browns, violets--that impact its look

2) the lighting in a room manipulates the color quite a bit, even as the light changes throughout the day

3) gray paints look quite different in satin vs. flat

4) and more...

Even knowing all of that, I still keep picking grays that turn out BLUE in our house! As a result, we unintentionally have 5 rooms and a stair hall that are light blue. I planned for three of them to be blue (Luke's room, the master bathroom--painted with Luke's leftover paint-- and the dining room, though I'm reconsidering that color scheme).

And the other two rooms were just completely failed attempts to paint the rooms gray.

First, I wanted the living room to be a true gray. I chose what appeared to be gray on the paint chip and sure enough, after paying a painter to apply it to the walls, it looks more blue than gray. At some times of the day it takes on a more gray look, like in these photos it looks like a straight forward gray (i.e. how I wanted it to look), but in real life it's quite blue. But, because I paid someone a fair amount to paint it, plus the fact that the color looks nice with the dark floors and other furniture, I'm ok with it.

My most recent gray error is the color that I chose for the guest room/ soon-to-be office in the basement. Realizing my past mistakes with too-blue grays, I purposely chose a gray that was far from blue. I SWEAR, it looked like a true light gray on the paint sample, see the first one, called Icy Bay:

Looks like light gray, right? Well, in the room it looks full-on BLUE. It doesn't even resemble gray... like, at all! This time I painted it myself and I paid extra for non-toxic paint, so I'm going to leave it for now. Plus, it doesn't actually look bad... I just didn't want another blue room!

I totally accept the fact that this all could have been avoided if I'd taken the advice of painters and design bloggers the world over who insist on putting paint samples up on the walls before committing to a room full of color. I don't ever do that. And it's not that I'm cheap, though the non-toxic paint is pricier than regular. It's that I really hate having things around the house that are not being used. Just ask Keith (who tends more toward pack-rattiness), I'm forever trying to sell, donate or otherwise purge things that we don't use all the time. He wants to put locking devices on his stuff so I can't sneak it to the trash barrels... kind of like the grocery carts that seize up if taken out of the store parking lot.

So anyway, there's nothing offensive about the 5 blue rooms in our house. I just don't want an all-blue color scheme. And I've yet to get the gray room of my dreams. Luckily I just read--from a few sources--about a sure thing gray that's really a true gray. I may try that for our bedroom. But I'll get a sample first this time, since, at this point Keith and I have both lost all confidence in my ability to choose a paint color!

I guess it could be worse than blue... at least I'm not into neon orange!