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susan_grider87

Paint Color for Floors with Green/Red Undertones

10 months ago

Hi,

I'm at my wits end trying to pick out a new color for our open concept living area!

I think it's the floors that are giving me the problem. When I'm in the home, I only notice they have a green undertone. However, in the picture I'm sharing I'm just noticing all the warm red that's in there too.

Currently, the cabinets are light gray but we are changing them out to White. The backsplash is white and I'm hoping to have the wall color give a nice contrast.


The countertops are a warm yellow/gold/taupe. The picture I'm attaching doesn't really capture the true tones of it.


The room faces south and has one window facing east & one facing west but it also has a very large overhang that gives lots of shade.


My problem so far in testing colors is that they either go yellow, green, or even pink/red undertones. I think I must be looking at the undertones and how they relate incorrectly.


I've tried:

SW Arrowroot (yellow!)

SW Pearly White (very grayish)

SW Natural Choice (surprisingly pink undertone...look in the corner of the room)

SW Oyster White (Shown on the island. Looks really green to me. Also shown to the right of the window down to the floor)

BM Sail Cloth (Orange...there's a small scribble of it on the wall)

BM Sea Pearl (grayish...also slight pink tone in sample. Shown left of window and below window)

BM Dove Wing (slight pink undertone in sample on wall)


I have samples for Soft Chamois & Glacier White that I will try tomorrow.


I think I'm looking for a light beige color.


If anyone has advice, I would surely appreciate it. What color family should I be looking at?

Thank you in advance.




Comments (15)

  • PRO
    10 months ago

    There are whites that lean in different color directions.


    Here are whites that are more commonly used by designers.

    Your selections have too much colorant in the paint. You need to go more neutral.




    Susan Grider thanked BeverlyFLADeziner
  • 10 months ago

    I agree that selecting a white color would be better than beige. My new house has white walls, and I like them so much better than the beige walls I've had in the past.

    When we sold our house in L.A., we painted the beige walls white, but we kept the dark aqua green in the dining room because it has a travertine floor, and the green color helped to neutralize the orange-beige color in the stone.

    Remember, beige is not neutral, as it has orange as its base hue, even though it has an extremely low intensity, but not to the point of being gray, which is neutral, like black and white.

    Susan Grider thanked Lars
  • 10 months ago
    last modified: 10 months ago

    If anyone has advice, I would surely appreciate it.

    Well, since you asked. 🙂

    Color online is not accurate so pix of the floor aren't the best clue.

    Additionally, odds are high you're going to get suggestions for colors that are essentially the same as - or very similar to - the ones you tried just because that's quite a list.

    My advice is take a minute, regroup and better understand the color samples you've spent money on before buying more.

    You need a lil strategy. Use the colors that didn't work to figure out where you want to go. Already have 'em, so put them to work. This is how I do it with clients who are up to their eyeballs in samples that don't work.

    Get all the chips together and sort them 3 times.

    Or, get 3 sets of chips - one for each sort.

    Put them in order by hue, value and chroma.

    Putting them in order by hue will help answer your "what family" question.

    Value will help you figure out where you want to be in terms of how light or dark.

    Chroma will show you what's too gray or not.

    By Hue


    By Value


    By Chroma


    Susan Grider thanked Lori Sawaya
  • 10 months ago

    Lori, thank you for your detailed response! I see all the colors I’ve chosen are in the yellow family. Should I be looking at a green or red hue family? I was choosing the yellow based colors because of the countertops but maybe that’s not right?

  • 10 months ago

    Definitely not red.


    A lot can be right about where you're looking in color space - yellow hue family.


    What color are the cabinets?

  • PRO
    10 months ago
    last modified: 10 months ago

    WHAT white exactly are you using for cabinetry?Sherwin Williams what?

    WHAT is the name/brand etc of the quartz counter top?

    Also? You can not test colors, any color as you are doing it. too close together, too small and all seen at once !!

    What will be in the breakfast area? will you have a rug? what else is near the kitchen ? A family room? Show it!

    Your kitchen and breakfast area is not divorced, nor isolated from the rest of your living space: )


  • 10 months ago
    last modified: 10 months ago

    Have you chosen the cabinet color, as it‘s a more important consideration than the floor.


    Thought this article might be helpful, as it‘s quite comprehensive on 10 BM go-to’s and their characteristics.

    https://kaitlinmadden.com/best-benjamin-moore-white/

  • PRO
  • PRO
    10 months ago

    Will oyster White be the cabinet color too?

  • 10 months ago

    I have Benjamin Moore Manchester Tan in most of my house with similar undertones. It is a bit of a chameleon color as it does pick up on other colors that surrounds it and does look slightly different in rooms depending on which way they are facing, but the main color is always in the tan range.

  • 10 months ago

    I think I need a nap. I couldn’t figure out why in the world someone would paint those beautiful hardwood floors!!

  • PRO
    10 months ago

    Littlebug you misread the post they want a paint color for walls that goes well with wood floors that have red/ green undertones😉

  • PRO
    10 months ago

    I would not be matching paint to the countertop. Male sure it compliments the cabinets.

    Don't worry about what your floor looks like in pictures. It will look different in your picture on your phone, on my computer screen , on someone else's phone etc.

    PLEASE do not paint little squares next to each other. How is that even helpful? Get a bunch of posterboards and paint one color per board ( use the back too ) . Then hang ONE color. Look at it on each wall during the day, night, sunny and cloudy. Make sure to have a couple of colors picked for your cabinets as well so you can look at it next to those.

    This is time consuming but I have always done this and it has never steered me wrong.

    Have you thought of leaning into the beige a little more? I found this picture ( obviously switch the colors of the walls and cabinets or not!)


    Good luck!

    Susan Grider thanked Debbi Washburn
  • 10 months ago

    I love color science and the information that the numbers can provide, but mostly for comparative purposes.


    70% of all the lighter neutrals and whites (as classified by Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams) fall in the Yellow Hue Family. Yellow greens are usually green grays or greige - far greener than your flooring will tolerate. The Green, Blue Green, Blue, Blue Violet are grays, the couple of reds are very pink, most of the orange have a strong orange/pink tone.


    So you will end up with one of the 414 light neutrals/whites in the yellow hue family.




    So now that we know this is not enough information where do we go from here?


    Testing against your current wall color is hurting your ability to see what works with the colors that are going to remain when you are done with everything else. The current wall color is going away.


    The key is being able to find the neutral color that works beautifully with your flooring and your cabinets and reduce the confusion that gets introduced when we start trying to account for all the impacts of internal lighting, shadows . . . .


    The easy way to do this without any special tools is to take a plank of your flooring, a door from your cabinets and a pile of paint samples and look at the combinations in natural daylight.

    (Ideal - 2:00 in the afternoon on a clear day). You don't need to get the sample jars for the first round of this process - the paper samples from the paint store will get you really close to the perfect color. They are free, so you can look at dozens and dozens of them and eliminate anything that looks too pink, green, purple, yellow . . .


    It is amazing how the undertones become apparent when seeing the colors together with natural daylight.


    Once you have narrowed the choices down to those where the paper samples look good you can move on to actual samples and narrow to that one "best" color.


    I often find that Shoji White works when Natural Choice and Oyster White are going too green or murky. The fact that you are seeing one of those colors as green and the other pink when they are so similar tells me that the lighting and shadows and the current wall color are confusing your perception. They do typically go green, not pink.






    Susan Grider thanked Jennifer Hogan
  • PRO
    10 months ago

    Jennifer Hogan..I love Shoji White one of my favorites..in my last home that was all my trim and kitchen cabinets.❣️