The project that’s top of my list right now? Paint!

Maybe you have the same feelings about paint as I do – a true love-hate relationship. I walk into our local paint store and get excited with those little paint chips. They all speak to me and grab about 20 thinking “wow, all of these are perfect!”. Then reality sinks in once I’m home … quickly getting frazzled because of those “little” paint chips. It’s barely enough color to give an accurate look at the undertones. And I don’t like making a decision on a color when I’m basing it off a 1″ x 1″ chip.

Since I’m trying to move away from the darker colors in our previous house (it made the house feel so dark…see a good example here), I’m leaning into a light, bright but warm, beachy feel for the new house. It’s my way of saying “welcome back to Cali”….Even though the beaches in nor cal are cold, windy and foggy. Anyway, I’m looking at light grays, whites and shades of greige. But they all have undertones you may not like so you need to be careful before painting an entire room. Or in my case, having the painter paint the entire home interior when I live 2,500 miles away.

Fun times.

To make this process a bit more stress-free, I narrowed down my stack of 20 paint colors to 11 and paid a small fee to have samples made…

5 colors are from our local Benjamin Moore store and the rest are Behr or Glidden colors. About $5 per can..And about $3.50 per jar…

As far as where to paint these samples, I’m sure the owner of our rental house wouldn’t appreciate a wall full of paint samples. Ha! Instead, I grabbed these great flat canvas boards…

No, it’s not a wall, but this did the trick!

I purchased 6 boards and cut them in half…

Then I wrote each of the paint names/brands at the bottom of the board…

As well as each paint brush…

Since I was applying 2 coats of paint (read = because i’m a total distracted airhead), I didn’t want to chance mixing up the paint on the boards. Go ahead, call me obsessive crazy.

Finally the fun part – painting…

I spread out everything on the kitchen counter and painted in between making breakfast for the kiddos…

When they were dry a short time later, I now had big paint samples. Samples that really helped me pick up the undertones. Another positive – these samples can fly to California with me in a few weeks to make final decisions with the painter.

Some of the paint colors I chose were found online – pinterest or houzz. Can’t express enough how different these colors were in person – on the paint chip and sample boards. We can’t trust the paint colors we see online – you have no idea how the photo has been edited (lightened or darkened).

Just talking out loud here – of course, tomorrow I could totally change my mind and paint the entire house in tranquility. Basically, consider this post a conversation with me, myself and I. Because although I have picked these 11 colors and love them all, next week I may be painting another 11 (or more) samples. I’m finding as much inspiration as I am changing my mind. I told you, paint and I have a love-hate relationship!

Without further ado, here are the 11 colors I (currently) love. From Benjamin Moore….

* Paper white, wickham gray, tundra, sterling and metropolitan

I tried not to edit these images very much so that you can see the “true” color.

From Glidden…

* Barely jade, fossil grey and jade frost

From Behr…

* Irish mist, silver drop and dolphin fin

I was surprised how much I liked these 2…

Just enough color, pretty, not distracting….But will it be enough color?

I also loved this barely jade color for my daughter’s room…

Since we’ll likely add a lot of pink accents to her big girl room, I’m moving away from pink walls. And at some point after move in, I’d love to add an accent wall like I did in her old room. However this time I’m thinking about coral stripes like this…