6.29.2012

the issue of color

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we finished the backsplash last night (EASY project!) and our kitchen transformation is almost complete.

someone who knows their culinary shizz cooks in the kitchen....is what they'll say. they'll be wrong, but they'll still say it.


the last [big] puzzle piece is new wall color. i mentioned before that we want a nice, light cool gray.

our kitchen gets almost no natural light due to only having one small window (and two glass-paned doors that dont do much), and that one is located in a place facing our back yard that is pretty shady anyway. so i need the decor in the room to pull itself up by the bootstraps and make its own light. thus, light gray.

plus after so much blue and cherry, i think this neutral palate will feel like a nice shower at the end of a day of salty, saturated swampassity.

here's the dilemma: the tones of cabinet paint we had to choose from on the rustoleum kit were a cream white and frost white. one with pinkish hues and one with blue hues. in the name of ridding the space of all warm, confining colors, i went with frost.

however, the "snow white" tile which was the brightest shade offered for our budget has decidedly warm tones. dammitz!

sometimes this disparity is practically imperceptible. and then other times it is screamingly awful. a lot depends on my mental health level at the time and the lighting conditions.

i looked at a bunch of white cab/white backsplash examples on pinterest and it turns out many of them had not-wuite-identical shades of white and i never would have noticed if i wasnt specifically inspecting that factor. so i am hoping it's just as case of being so close to the project that i notice every potential flaw.

regardless, since, as a reader pointed out on facebook (hi tamara!), gray is the biggest schizo of all the colors and can come across with red, blue, purple, or even green feelings, depending on the shade, there are LOTS of varieties to choose from.

and since we are dealing with the issue of incompatible undertones with our whites, i want to make sure the gray is a neutral mediator and not taking sides in the war of cool vs. warm.

so i need your voice. i need you to rock the vote in the comments section or if youre shy over on the poll yonder right above our family picture towards the top

the question is: not which shade is your favorite, but what shade of gray do you think best marries the two different white surfaces that are in our kitchen, while also being its own voice?

one color just had a boring number so i named it myself. you'll never guess which one.

oh, and i made a typo in my labeling; it's gull wing, not gull wind. i dont want bird fart colors on my walls, thanks.


again, what shade of gray do you think best marries the two different white surfaces that are in our kitchen...minimizing their differences and uniting the two of them?


if you are vehemently opposed to gray marriage, then you can abstain.

oh man, best. pun. ever. high fiving a million angels.


31 comments:

  1. silver half dollar. yes.

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  2. I like the Gray Lady of Ravenclaw (and not just because of the HP reference.)

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  3. The gray lady of ravenclaw all the way...it also gets bonus points for the HP shout out.

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  4. Gray lady of ravenclaw, added bonus- you have the excuse to watch all 7 HP movies, you know, as research. ;)

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  5. I'm too intimidated to choose! We tried really hard to get a nice gray for our baby's room. It totally looks purple. Gray can be very tricky, so be careful. Good luck! Do lots of swatches around and check at different times of day!

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  6. I agree with wading...lots of swatches around and check different times of day. Those little paper color swatches are great for many crafty uses, but seeing the big-picture-end-result-paint-job is not one of them!!

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  7. Hi :) I like color so I'm gonna do my bi-annual chime in. Look at the other gray/silver things in your kitchen and let them help you (microwave, trashcan, sink) as well as any accessories you are going to keep from the red & yellow days. Oh, and don't listen to what anybody tells you via the internet about which color to pick cause all our screen resolutions are different and the colors we see aren't what you see. Besos!

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  8. Hahaha, high five on the best pun ever.

    Also, I first saw the survey before I saw the photo and thought you wanted people to vote just on the color names, as if everyone had some sort of sixth sense as to what they'd look like. Then I saw the picture and it made much more sense. Ha!

    Anyway, I vote for marina gray.

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  9. I think metallic silver or silver half dollar, but I'm no expert.

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  10. In my professional opinion, which is none, I like how silver springs. In the photo, it is the one that has the most neutral undertone. If you feel like it might be too dark, the paint people can do that color but with a little white in it. That way you have the same tone but not the darkness . . .

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  11. Based on my tiny iPhone screen I would choose metallic silver bc paint always comes up darker.... But I agree with some of the pp about waiting( so hard for us complulsive people!). Get a few large pieces of white cats board and paint them in your top faces, and prop them in the kitchen for the weekend. Paint samples are soooo cheap!

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    1. your phone has betrayed you with hilarious results. i dont want to waste my supply of cats board. those things are expensive! and my personal top face are probably jesse's, brad pitt, and heidi klum. do i have to paint all of those on each cats board?

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    2. Just one face, let's go with brad. Paint the face on the cats board and wait. DurIng the night a warlock will turn it into a sphinx! If you answer the riddle correctly, the brad cat board will tell you the right color.

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  12. You may hate me for expanding the selection pool... but check out "Classic Gray" by Benjamin Moore and "Sea Salt" by Sherwin-Williams if you get a chance. Both are "cool" grey-ish colors, but they can go with almost anything and are very forgiving of any accent colors you throw at them.

    I just did a quick mental calculation and I've painted over 40+ rooms in either my own homes, parents, or friends homes over the years. Or just repainted our own living room when the mood strikes me - to my hubby's amusement- that's been at least 6 times over the past 4 years. He knows when he goes away on trips for works, he will come home to a new color somewhere in our house.

    Hands down, the biggest factor in the end product is quality of paint. I've found colors I loved on paint chips, but then hated based on the brand of paint and finish used. (for the love of all things holy, just say NO to flat!! At least get eggshell/satin!)

    Benjamin Moore is AWESOME for most all interior paint jobs. My .2c may be worth less than a penny to you in this process, but just thought I'd chip in. =oP

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    1. i found a great ben moore coupon and am going to try it for the first time ever bc i have heard that it really does make a difference, though the paint nerd at home depot lectured me on the fact that "his" paints beat all of BM's.

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  13. If you are dead set on painting anyways, why not get a couple of test cans and paint swatches directly onto your walls? We did this trying to select a new living room colour and after a couple of days living with large blotches in different shades on our walls it was easy to decide.

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  14. Gray is a hard color! My sister and I scoured paint samples and even painted swatches and still ended up with a room that ended up leaning towards the lavender side of the spectrum. I say check out the wonderful land of pinterest and get the names of the colors used in actual rooms with subway tile/white cabinets, that way you can gauge. The kitchen transformation looks completely amazing by the way!

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  15. Keight, my mom did this in her kitchen and ALWAYS gets compliments on it. Have you considered this?

    http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/same-color-in-glossmatte-strip-107709

    It looks like two different colors. she did satin over the whole wall and then did 12 inch stripes of clear polyurethane to make the high glass. Perhaps if you did this it wouldn't matter as much if the color is perfect because with two different finishes it can look different anyway!

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    1. holy cow that is really cool and also a little terrifying. such a cool effect!

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  16. I've been known to repaint a room several times before hiring a professional decorator to finally come and pick the right color. The best thing I've done is pick pottery barn colors. They have the color wheel at the store (both PB and PBK) and every time I've picked one of those, I've always been happy with the result.

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  17. LOVE all that you've done to the kitchen! i fantasize about painting my cabinets maybe every single day, but doubt that i'll ever get around to it. i can tell you i would be doing it by myself, so that is discouraging...anywhooooo.... my vote is for gray lady b/c i feel like (from the swatch anyway) she has the ability to go cool or warm and i think she will be a great mediator of your two whites. i do agree that it is wise to get samples and paint big swatches. paint whole poster boards and move them around the room, watching as they change depending on light and shadows. but i am still betting on gray lady.

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  18. Love what you've done! I'd say gray lady. But I agree with the others that you have to have a large test to really see how you feel about it. Have fun!

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  19. The kitchen looks great! I'd use gray lady, with silver dollar as my 2nd choice. I would suggest getting a tester and paint a couple of squares 12" by 12" and live with it in different light. That's what we did when we chose our paint colours. The same colour can look completely different throughout the day. Good luck!

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  20. My hubs and I just did all of this a few months ago, too! We painted the cabinets an off-white color and did the tile back splash in an off-whiteish/tanish color. We did gray countertops and I ended up using left over gray paint from the bathroom on the kitchen walls. It is a dark gray called Almost Charcoal and I love the way it looks. I used it in the half bath with bright WHITE stripes so it does look good with white. I cant tell from your picture which would look best because on my screen the cabinets look kind of blue. I have a picture of the bath on instagram (mrsbdiddy):)

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  21. I say get a couple swatch cans. It is so hard to tell via computer screen.

    Did you use any specific tute for tiling the backsplash? I am wanting to do the exact same white subway tile in mine. Thanks for the info!

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    1. i generally followed the tutorial here: http://themustardceilingblog.com/2012/04/subway-tile-backsplash-tutorial.html?doing_wp_cron=1341869911.1771700382232666015625

      definitely rent that wet saw! ours was on $39 for overnight and it was a dream come true lifesaver.

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