The drama of the bedroom paint

We have had a heck of a time picking paint colors for the upstairs. We did ok choosing the colors for downstairs. The great room was a snap - first two colors we saw were the ones we went with. The laundry room was next, and after we finished painting it we didn't like the color. But it's just the laundry room, so we dealt with it. We picked a different color for the office

thinking it would work for the hall too - but after we painted the office, we decided it was too pink for the rest of the house. And from there, it's been like pulling teeth to choose a color. We've bought probably 2 dozen 8 oz samples from Home Depot. Our color chip collection takes up a whole shoe box. You can see our walls were a regular rainbow of swatches.

Finally we decided on a color. We woke up one Saturday, Doug turned to me and said, want to paint the bedroom!? So we zipped over to the store and picked up the paint matching the color to a card we had used already to make the 8 oz sample we liked. We painted up a storm that morning - corralling Ben in his room, which he was very patient with, though he did spread his diapers and books all over the room. As the paint dried, we got more and more nervous. The color was not what we were expecting... it was green. Below is the best pic we could get of the disaster. On the left is the wrong color. On the right is the color it was supposed to be.

Boy were we frustrated! The color match scanner must have been out of calibration because the two scans were nothing alike. The next day I dragged the remaining gallons of paint back to Home Depot, told them my sob story, talked to a manager and finally convinced them to let me return and re-buy the right color. Moral of the story--don't buy paint using a color match scan. It took us a few weeks to have an open morning for painting, but we were highly motivated!

And now, we love the color! It's the perfect warm (but not pink!) tan.

We're still on the hunt for a good color for the hall, but hopefully that will come soon. We've got to finish the paint before we order new carpet, and we'd like to have the new carpet in before we install the rest of the baseboard. One step at a time, right?