Check out bm greenfield pumpkin. we used it at our old house from 1931. It looks outstanding with white trim too.

Have you gone to the paint store with a fabric swatch? We have a good BM paint store in the area and they are great at matching colors.

Out of curiosity, who "told" you to go with the dark gold? I'm seeing a lot more of the lighter beige-y gold in the paisley and that would be an easier color to live with.

I'm going through something similar at GFs house where she is looking for a deeper gold for her walls in the DR and the gold in the rug and the fabric has a lot of green undertone. When you put it up on the wall, it looks like baby poo. Not good.

I agree that paint decks can make you crazy. I consider them only a very general starting point.

When I was looking for a creamy (not too yellow, not too tan) wall color for my open plan house, I started putting splashes up on my wall. All the wrong colors grew to a mural-sized patchwork and it plagued me so much I painted over it in the old original color. It brought me back to my balance.

I then picked a piece of wall that got all kinds of light, and made a square of my 6 or 8 favoritess, so I could compare and it helped me discern undertones. When I had my two finalists, I painted large (at least 3x3 ft) pieces of foam core and set them on the mantle for a couple of days, then moved them to other locations. The one I chose (SW Antique White) went just about everywhere, including ceilings, and it behaved exactly as I anticipated.

Good luck! We've all been in your shoes.

I've attached a blog where the person was searching for a light caramel, which is what I think you need, not just caramel which is going to make every thing too dark. She came up with a formula and you can view it. Great color and would look super in your home.

Here is a link that might be useful: light caramel paint

On my monitor the Roxbury looked perfect with your fabric. It is a more beige gold. Pull up the pic of it and see how it picks up the golden beige in your fabric.

I think part of the difficulty you're having is that you're not using large enough samples. I always use large foam boards - at least 3 feet square, sometimes even more than one in the same color so I can put them on opposing walls in a corner to see how that affects the "experience" of the color.

I've got a couple of dozen boards that have been painted and repainted many times through many rooms' color selection over the years.

I always use at least two coats of the paint beng sampled so I can get a good read on the color.

I might try five or six colors on separate boards, at first. Then i deploy the boards in the room in question and just live with them. Usually there's one or two quickly-evident misses. I take these boards away. Over a week or so the best ones emerge. Then I repaint some of the dogs with the favored colors and set out two or three examples of each of my faves. At that stage, it's prettty easy to pick the right one. If not, analyze all the fails and start another ound.

The second problem is trying to match a small color element from a fabric sample to a paint swatch on a deck and expecting the corresponding paint to work well on the wall. This is usually a frustrating fools' errand, IMO. Even taking an item in to be "color-matched" by a computer doesn't lead in the right direction in most cases. You don't want a technically correct CMK formula, you want something that achieves the look you want in the light conditions of the actual room, to your eyes.

It doesn't really matter if the pink of the blowsy rose in the curtains is a perfect match to the paint swatch. At best, the curtains can give you a general direction (i.e. in the case of pink, towards a rosier-bluer pink or in a more apricotty warm direction) and then you should look for colors in the appropriate range. In my experience gettng the color of the second-largest paisley swirl perfectly matched and putting that shade on the wall is almost guaranteed to be unsatisfactory. That's because the color of a single element is invariably being influenced by the colors adjacent to it. But once you separate it out from the modulating influence of those adjacent colors, you often wind up with completely different effect.

What the study of individual color details can do is lead you towards the right direction, and help you correctly identify undertones.

Think of what color you want the room to be, then look at those colors to see which one looks nice in the room (paint large sample boards), then among your faves then see which ones look best with your chosen fabrics, rugs and other already-chosen elements. It's fine to start with an idea such as: "I see this room with those gorgeous red curtains with warm golden accents in the pattern. I think I'd like the walls to be a warm, not too intense, no too-green overtone (i.e. not brassy), medium to light shade of gold." Then look for those colors that meet that description in the decks. Never mind which strip they appear on, nor what the nearest strips in deck show. Pick several that appeal to you and sample them. Then once you can look at them on the boards (which you can move around the room) figure out why the rejects have missed the mark. That's even more important in the early stages than deciding why you like the ones you do. Because on the next rounds you can deliberately avoid colors that have same less-desired effects, saving time and sample-pot money.

Keep in mind these principles: each room is unique with its own lighting; every photograph and electronic image lies; the physiology of each individual's unique translation of wave length to color perception is biologcally different; and the associations we make to any particular color exist in the realm of our psychological world. I, for instance, have no aversion (other than semantic) to the color of "baby-poo". In fact I could not even begin to desccribe what color that might be since I have never seen any baby-poo. It sounds icky, but maybe w/o the name being attached, I'd think it useful in some circs.

And that brings me to the printed names of colors. These play profound influence on our preferences, I think. It would be better to only think in terms of numbers - though perhaps harder to keep things straight given the enormous number of colors available and the names can be a useful tool for that reason. But make no mistake, the names are carefully chosen for marketing reasons, not really as accurate, or useful descriptors of the color itself. You can be led astray from what your mind's eye is demanding by the words in the color's name. I know that from personal experience.

Finally, it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of research about colors and how they relate to each other. With school budget cuts, many people have not been exposed to basic art classes and so don't have a basic working framework about color theory.. On a recent thread I read about someone wanting a "blue-er shade of gray", because they wanted it to be "warmer". While I have no doubt they know what they want, if they keep looking towards bluer grays they will heading in exactly the wrong direction. No wonder many people find paint choice so frustrating.

L.

How about a yellow?

Here is a link that might be useful: Carol Glasser - red & yellow rooms

I haven't taken my fabric in to get color matched simply because I'm not dead-set on that particular color, I could go in any direction, but I'll definitely consider it.

I too thought the Roxbury was a contender, but the brown undertone in the Richmond Gold scared me away from that entire strip.

I adore the yellow as well...it looks fabulous with that fabric! Another possibility.

This post was edited by dominoswrath on Thu, Dec 5, 13 at 13:57

"Then I repaint some of the dogs with the favored colors and set out two or three examples of each of my faves."

I've heard of people matching their decor to their pets, but not the other way around... :)