The blue paint has a lot of gray in it...may want to try a beige or taupe color wall.

Sigh. I've seen this so often in woman's retail. The ol' "changing gray"! You buy the gray skirt in the store because you are tired of black and when you take it out of the bag at home....it's GREEN (or brown)! Sad to say, but lighting in the stores is HORRIBLE. A swatch that you take home would have been the only way you could have avoided this.

You have a sofa that is taupe (brown taupe...but taupe none the less). Taupe naturally has a gray background....but not enough for your taste...obviously.

The "gray" on your wall is turning quite "blue" in these pictures...this blue is "highlighting" the "brown" in your taupe sofa. A new paint colour would go a long way to help out your situation. You may have to look at a colour other than gray on you walls.

The other part of this dilemma is the blue sofa cushions. On a gray, this would make the gray look blue. On a brown taupe the blue highlights the brown! Thus, with the gray/blue walls+blue pillows, you have inadvertently produced the PERFECT colour scheme to make your taupe sofa turn BROWN.

Now you need to go the other way. You need to find some colours that will turn the taupe to a gray. I will let the painters/designers take it from here! I'm not very good at suggestion wall colours that bring out furnishing colours....but you definitely need to change the walls and the pillows to produce a "gray" sofa!

I think both of you are right! I painted the walls Behr's Porpoise before the sofa had arrived. I do not mind painting again and/or changing the pillows if anyone has any suggestions they think may work!

Maybe try a sage green theme? That always works well with brown.

Bring the samples home to put next to the sofa/flooring. I compare at different times of the day and at night with lights to make sure it is right.

Looks nice. I would just add some gray pillows and a rug that has taupes and grays in it.

Lighter and brighter walls would help. mmilos' suggestion about the rug is a great one.

So far the advice has been spot on. Now it's time to tackle another color choice for the wall. If you swap out the throw pillows to something dramatically different that will help you on the quest for a new color. I think the best course of action at this point is to let go of the gray thing. If you keep focusing on changing the couch's color you will never be happy. Nothing will ever get you past it. The reality was that it has always been a sort of mushroom taupe color which does have a lot of gray but isn't gray. Now the focus has to be, What will look great with my new taupe couch? If you buy new pillows in a couple of different colors it can get you started in new paint color choice. Just keep the cushion you like and take back the ones you don't. From there most paint stores sell cheap samples. Pick out a couple of colors based more on cushion less on couch. (You can bring cushion with too. You can't bring couch:)) A bold choice might lye in the dark rich colors like a good dark coffee or chocolate but anything in the solid beige arena will work also. Also put paint samples on boards not walls. Then you have flexibility to move them around room and look at them independently rather than in contrast with one another. You will love the couch again, you just have to view the situation from a fresh perspective and let the initial disappointment go. Good luck and post an after picture!

Add a great piece of art to enhance the space. Click on the link below. It is my photography shop and I can customize size.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/102481897/shoreline-of-st-maarten-caribbean


You may want to browse. You can buy it printed on canvas just contact me. The listing is for an 8 in x 10 in. If you like that size you can order two or three in a similar theme. Let me know if you need assistance.

Thanks for all the advice everyone... am considering Benjamin Moore's Cedar Key at the moment. What does everyone think?

By chance, are you sure the store got your order right? Have you brought home the grey fabric you ordered, just to be sure it was manufactured in the fabric you selected? If it was, then we continue the quest (and I would toss a brown cushion on there, dark brown, to see if it counteracts the colour and helps it read more grey,) though to be honest, I don't see how we can make this fabric look grey....to me, on my screen, this is taupe leaning heavily to brown.

DON'T PANIC. Taupe and red is stunning.

Hi Wow Great Place-Unfortunately I did get what I ordered. I actually took the cushion back to the store and compared it with what I had based my order off of. My cushion looked gray in the store! I asked what type of lighting they use and apparently it's LED. The camera on my iphone isn't the best, and the pictures make the sofa look even browner than it is in my room.

When a gray turns brown, the remedy is brown... (as in throw pillows, art, etc.) which will turn your sofa back to gray. Then you paint your wall in a color close to your sofa. Once you have done that you can add your other colors. Ahh, just noticed that Wow gave you the brown advice. Good. :)

Is that a Bennet sofa from EA?

Do you have fluorescent lights on your home? If not then try them out. Not only economical and "green" they may affect this fabric. Accents will too. I have a couch in similar fabric that I got on purpose so I could change if I got tired of grey later on. I have white walls with blue accents and it brings out the gray now

Embrace the brown-it's nice. Change out the bright green to more of a jade hue, add a rug (carpet has a pink undertone), introduce a sweet potato color or squash, change the walls to a color 1-2 shades lighter than the sofa, and add art or a mirror or whatever. Done!
Good Luck!
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Can YOU change your lights to LED?

I like your sofa regardless:)

Hi Jaworma-The sofa is actually from Bassett.

Nice! Though not quite grey yet, the sofa is definitely more taupe (that in between shade that can go either way)
The change in wall colour helped, and likely the lighting made a huge difference. Try the dark brown somewhere, see if it counteracts the brown in the sofa....just for fun!

Agree with Wow regarding the brown and changing the wall color.

NICE!!! totally looks different! great job!

Sofa definately looks more grey now than before! Good job!

Good job so far. How about some brown wood accent pieces and pillows with a brown pattern plus whatever other accent colors you like. If you like aqua, get brown/aqua pillows to go with the ones you already have. I think it looks much more grey in the new picture.

What would disappoint me more than the color is the wrinkles on the lower cushions. I bring this up only because your story rings home for me. When my sofa arrived, the color looked quite different in my home. Yes, I reprinted the walls to help... But I had the same wrinkle issue and brought this up with customer service. They came today, did some magic with steam and it looks like a beautiful new sofa. It made a world of difference. Maybe I can post a before and after this weekend.

I am having the opposite problem. My brown couch is reading more gray now that it's in my living room. How do I bring out the brown in the couch and dampen the gray? Thanks!

why don't you swap couches with the Ahemric!! LOL

I work in a couture fabric shop and one of the biggest challenges is matching colors. There are colors, such as taupe and say, periwinkle, that change based on what colors are next to it. For example, periwinkle looks purple until you put it next to purple, and then it looks blue. Put it next to blue it looks purple. Same with taupe. Put it next to gray and it looks brown; put it next to brown and it looks gray. Lighting is a huge factor. We have fluorescent lighting which will change all colors. So we take the customer outside to see what color you perceive it to be under natural light. So if you want your sofa to look more gray, put it next to brown.

Omg. Just realized this thread started in 2012. Well, still relevant.

Change your light bulbs to GE REVEAL - ALL of them. Cheap hi-efficiency give a yellow cast, fluorescent give out a green and LED tend toward blue. GE Reveal will get you closest to natural sunlight....