shades of gray

So...picking out a paint color is not the easiest thing to do especially when it comes to gray. When we first moved into our new home a few months ago we had our kitchen renovated and decided to take advantage of the painters that were already there and had them paint the new walls a dark gray. 

before reno and demo

We spent so much time at Home Depot during the renovation process I decided to just go with a paint color they had. I didn't have a lot of time to make a decision, which I think was a good and bad thing, so we looked at Martha Stewart Living Seal and Zinc and then just chose Zinc. We could have been half asleep actually, I don't even remember what made us choose that color. The renovation was a very hard process to go through - new house, no kitchen, constant contractors in and out, dust EVERYWHERE, boxes EVERYWHERE, 2 days turned into almost 3 weeks, etc. etc. etc. Regardless - overall I am very pleased with it and so happy all I had to do was hand them the paint chip. :)


after from the kitchen looking over the new bar (where the wall was in the before picture)

When we decided we were going to paint our living room it was a different story.


staged photo before we bought the house - everything is the SAME color - cabinets included.

We had a pretty clean slate as you can see above, so I knew I wanted to paint it a warm light gray...easy enough right? OMG was I wrong, turns out when you have more than a day to decide and are sleeping more than 4 hours a night you have quite a few more choices! I literally had about 50 shades of  gray I was scouring over and deciding between.

As you can see below they were taking over at one point:

I didn't want it to be too blue, too beige, or too purple...not an easy task, especially because paint changes color so much from one wall to the next depending on the lighting and time of day. After about a week I finally narrowed it down to two - ok - maybe 10 then 5 and then two...

Sherwin Williams Anew Gray and Requisite Gray:

anew gray

requisite gray

I painted four 8.5x11 sheets of beige paper (2 anew and 2 requisite) and put them up on 2 different sides of the living room for about 4 days to compare them in different light, etc. We both thought Anew Gray looked the best so we went for it and the painting began! 
Here it is after.

We still have a lot to do in here decor wise, but I just love the new warm gray color. It is just what I wanted. Since we had our breakfast area painted for us, I had no idea how easy it would be!  I want to paint every room in the house now. As hard of a decision it was to choose the paint color I highly recommend everyone do it! It makes such a difference and adds personality to your home! Now I just need to decide what room is next! :)

Happy Tuesday!