Finally Painting the Guest Room

I've maybe mentioned before that we try to have only one room at a time that has an assortment of squares of paint options on the walls. 

The guest room has been that room for a quite a while now. 

Because it's a west-facing room and it gets plenty of afternoon sunlight, I was thinking that we could go with a darker color in there. I liked the idea of a navy (Martha Stewart Plumage) or a darkish, true gray. We ruled out the navy and dark green options because we already have a dark teal room. The trouble was in finding the gray.

I scoured blogs and Pinterest to find rooms that looked like what I was looking for. Rooms like these: 

However, when I painted the swatches that matched the specific paint colors from the above pictures, I wasn't happy with any of them. 

We first painted just the three swatches on the bottom left (Martha Stewart Plumage, Benjamin Moore Newburg Green, and Behr Amazon Stone). This was really just to see if we wanted to go in a navy direction or a gray direction. We picked the gray route, and decided to find a more true gray since Amazon Stone leans towards the brown side a bit. (Fascinating, I know). 

So, since I know that picking paint colors from a paint swatch is tricky (and not a talent of mine), and I know that grays are particularly tricky, I hit up Pinterest again to see what colors worked for other people. We picked three grays and ruled one out immediately. So we added Benjamin Moore Thunder and Sherwin Williams Requisite Gray to the bottom row. 

so. many. squares.

Nope. Still not what I was looking for. I was ready to accept defeat and just pick one of the already painted options instead of trying to find another color. Enter Richard. (Actually, he was already in the picture since he painted the second round of options.) He offered to go to Home Depot and just. pick. a. gray. My eyes narrowed in obvious skepticism. I explained that picking paint colors from a paint swatch is tricky and that selecting grays are particularly tricky. 

He, of course, came back with three perfect gray options in varying shades. I picked the middle one, Glidden Seal Gray, and it is exactly what I was looking for! I mean, how great is this Richard guy?

All eight options (that made it onto the walls) plus a very spoiled puppy. 

Another section with only six of the options -- just to give a feel for how many squared were painted on the walls. 

Yay!

He also painted the closet while he was at it. He used Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray which is our downstairs color that we already knew we loved. 

The lovely completed closet!