This is very strange but I wouldnt blame the painter. Wet paint is always dries darker so when you paint with the same color over dry paint it will look different. I’d want an explanation from the store.

Did he get the brand you specified, or did he have it color matched in another brand of paint? That could very well account for the difference in color.

He got the brand and paint I specified, but the place he went to get it used a different formula than where I got the sample. (I have the cans). I went back to the store I got the sample from, and he said that's always the case - that a sample isn't the same as the paint. (?!) That sounds crazy to me, why did I waste $9 on a paint sample then?? I spent HOURS trying to find the right color and I want this behind me...I can live with it.

ALWAYS buy a quart of the real paint in the sheen you want. sample paint is not real paint. The color will be close, but not the same color. I read that years ago and have followed it since.

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Paint has measured colour attributes which paint companies use as a target to ensure consistency from batch to batch.

But the colour target can often be achieved in mutiple ways.

Somtimes a shot of a particular colourant maybe so small, even in a large can, that it becomes too difficult to reproduce as an even smaller percentage, for a sample can.

So they combine other colourant proportions to achieve the same measured target colour.

That’s why examining formulas for colourant ratios is a waste of time. They can be different depending upon the size of can.

Most often, if a colour doesn’t appear in a particular space as you imagine it should? It is due to the quality of available light & the context of the room in which you paint it.

’Change the light + you change the colour.’

Less often colours are mixed incorrectly at the store.