Vent: My living room looked like a muddy puddle until I finally got the undertone right

I painted my whole living room this beige called 'Warm Stone' last month and it looked totally dead and grayish. My wife said it looked like we were in a sad basement, not a house in Phoenix. Turns out the undertone was actually cool gray, not warm yellow, so it clashed with our red brick fireplace. Anyone else have a color swatch completely change personality once it hit the wall?

2 comments

2 Comments

perez.cole21d ago

Yeah "Warm Stone" sounds like it SHOULD have warm yellow undertones but a lot of those beiges are actually cool gray like you said. That's because most paint companies use black or gray as the base for their neutral shades, not brown or yellow. I had the exact same problem with a color called "Creamy Mushroom" that turned into straight up concrete on my walls. The trick I learned is to always look at the color strip and pick the shade TWO steps darker than what you want, because lighter colors tend to pull out the cool undertone way more.

the_sage21d ago

Honestly this is just how things work everywhere, not just paint. It's like how those "warm white" LED bulbs actually look blue in a room with wood tones. You really gotta factor in everything around it, not just the swatch on its own.