Paint & Suffering

Dead Celery Yellow-Green was the original color of our dining room. Or at least that is what The Chef (/Bob/my spouse) called it. So we painted it the color at the top of this pyramid:

Restoration Hardware Glacier. The result was Not Swell. Lessons learned:

RH’s Glacier is a cool, clear, white-blue. I think it might reflect light sweetly in a bathroom with no windows or a gloomy room that needs cheer. Sadly, we used Glacier in the brightest room in our house. Also sadly, all the other paint colors in the house are more mid-toned and muddy. Glacier looked like it was literally Glowing On The Walls. Scary. No photo. We repainted before the brightness could sear my retinas.

It is also basically identical to Benjamin Moore’s Harbour Haze. Swanky designer, Jeffrey Bilhuber, once listed Harbour Haze as one of his favorite paint colors. I want to ask him where he uses it successfully, but I rather doubt he’ll post a comment on my blog to answer ;).

Alsoalso, the quality of RH’s paint struck me as so-so. It is a bit thin-ish and coverage is not its strong suit. But the Subtle Velvet finish is nice. And Restoration Hardware has some nice colors and a small enough deck to keep the anxious homwownwer from overwhelm. If you choose to use RH paint and not have it color matched elsewhere, don’t forget to stirstirstir because RH paint is pre-mixed and has been hanging out on a shelf for ages.