What is it with paint colour charts?  In my experience, they bear little to no resemblance to the actual colour of the paint you purchase.

When I get an Avon book, I know that the colour of the lipstick or nail varnish shown is pretty close to the real thing, so why can’t the emulsion manufacturers do the same?

A recent example from the Bach household.  Husband decides he’s going to decorate our bedroom.  Paint chart is collected and studied, a short-list of potential colours is arrived at.  He chooses ‘Dusted Fondant’, I choose ‘Malted Chocolate’.

I look at his colour, unconvinced after the ‘Frozen Cranberry’ crisis of 2001.  What looked like a pleasant, warm red actually turned out to be a kind of murky purple.  It didn’t go with the blue velvet curtains (inherited, long since replaced) and was eventually exchanged for ‘Warm Amber’ – these names may not be strictly accurate, my memory’s not that good!

So, off we go to The Range and buy tester pots.  I do like The Range – their Christmas advert slogan of ‘If we don’t sell it, you don’t need it’ was very good.  Anyway, I digress.  On returning home, he then disappeared upstairs to paint a section of the wall in the chosen colours.  When he arrived back I could tell all was not well.

‘I’m not sure about those colours’ he said.  ‘You’ll have to have a look, they might be better when they’re dry’.  This did not fill me with confidence.

I gathered myself together, and headed upstairs to view the wall.  ‘Oh dear’ I thought to myself (or words to that effect, my daughter reads my blog so I may be editing).

Now, it may be because he’s painted over ‘Warm Amber’ and not used an undercoat (does anybody?!), but for ‘Dusted Fondant’ read a sort-of mauve/lavender (not in a good way) and for ‘Malted Chocolate’ substitute battleship grey.  Battleship grey!  No doubt bulk supplies of this would be cheap to purchase from the Navy, but it’s not the sort of colour you want in your bedroom!!  So I have a portion of wall painted in these colours until I can get back to the shop to purchase more paint. 

Now we’re considering ‘Tuscan Terracotta’, but I’m insisting on another tester pot in case this is too orangey and makes the room look like it’s been ‘Tangoed’!  Oh the joys of DIY.