Comparing Navy Blue Paint Colors

Hello Friends!! It is no exaggeration when I tell you I have been waiting a whole year to paint this new darker color! Yep, a whole YEAR! You see I contemplated it for a while, would try to discard the urge, and tell myself I didn’t need too, but it would keep coming back! Like a bad craving for something chocolate. Every time the urge would come back I would weigh out the pro’s and con’s. I loved the look of a rich navy blue, that had deep charcoal undertones in it, but my office / laundry room [which is right off our dining room] is already painted Wescott Navy by Benjamin Moore. So if I painted my dining room dark, now does that mean I have to repaint my office?

Because my dining room is the room I’m dreaming about painting one of these rich, navy blue colors with gray undertones in. The Wood Smoke gray [by Glidden] that’s currently in our dining room is such a great color. It’s the first color I painted when we moved into this house – insert a little nostalgia – and it was so popular. Every time I share a photo of our dining room, people go nuts over the pretty gray wall color. So I would subside the urge.

Then it would come back again, and I would rethink those first two thoughts about the office, and everyone loving the gray, and look around, and realize that with our island now painted a dark gray/navy blue, it pops so nicely when you look at it from the dining room, and I had just painted to the door in the dining room navy blue. I would see these three colors repeated around our house – gray, white, and navy blue. Did I really want to jepordize that? So I would tell those thoughts to go away. I held off and held off, and told myself that white and gray is still trendy – which it is, and I was still seeing other bloggers paint their dark rooms white, so why would I go in the opposite direction? I would try and try and try to talk myself out of it, and gave myself every reason in the book on why I shouldn’t. But when it came down to it, those reasons were all tied into what I thought other people would think. Wait a minute?! And this is the part that I feel is very important. We should never decorate our homes to please other people who do not live there. We should always decorate our homes to please us and the people we share it with. 

So last week as I was testing new paint colors for our exterior doors I did something crazy. I painted a few swatches on the wall in our dining room. Just to see. To test the waters so to speak.  I chose a few different spots on different walls around the room to get a good feel for the light. I figured if I didn’t like it or wasn’t sure, than I could just go back over those spots with the gray. Then after a few days, I decided to test out a few more colors next to the first swatch just for comparison.

I was still 80% sold on the first color swatch I painted, but really wanted to be sure before I committed. I left it that way for five days! FIVE days!! Sat in the room, contemplated how the whole space would look. I knew the potential it had of looking amazing, but I still wasn’t 100% sold.

Then last Friday, I went and got one more sample. Peppercorn, by Sherwin Williams, it’s the color I painted our island, and the color in our downstairs bathroom. BINGO! That was it.  To be sure though, I tried mixing it 50/50 with a light gray and 50/50 with a dark gray, just to be sure I wanted to go full strength. 

I waited until my husband got home that night to ask him with shade he liked best, and it was either of the two darkest ones. So you know what I went for it. I gave the entire room a first coat of paint Friday night at 8pm! Sounds like an exciting Friday night, right?! And I knew I made the right decision. It just felt right. That was the 100% feeling I was waiting for.

I can’t believe I waited a whole year to paint this color. I knew the with the first brush strokes of putting Peppercorn up on the wall that was the color I had been wanting. I’m so glad I trusted my gut. Sometimes you just gotta take a leap!

Painting Advice

Sometimes it’s hard when you are comparing colors and there are so many to choose from. When I’m the hunt for a new color, I head to the paint store and grab some swatches. Three, Four, Five, Eight. However many it takes in that color. The best thing to do is grab similar colors with different undertones, take them home and see what they look like in the lighting in your own home. Once you’ve narrowed down your choices, always grab a sample and do some small testing spots in different areas around the room. I guarantee you if you grab more than 3 or 4 samples you will have too many to choose from. Weigh out how it looks in the space, and what you like and don’t like about the color. Are there yellow undertones? Or purple undertones. If it’s one thing I’ve learned paint can look completely different in the store than when you bring it home. I know this is hard, but try at all costs not to be impatient and just buy a gallon of paint. This rarely works out, and if you are color crazy like I am, the wrong undertone can have you right back in that paint store in no time!

I hope you find this helpful and stay tuned to see our dining room painted a new color!! Full Reveal Coming Soon!

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