House Paint buying

So, we have been redoing our home of 28 years- many of the rooms never got finished as we were living in it with 3 daughters, 2 or more animals,  and working full time.  But now, we are insulating, having the floors redone and I am in charge of painting/wall papering/decorating the various rooms .

Now , we don't live in a mansion, but we have 11 small rooms and a hallway to deal with.  Over the 2013 winter between cardiac arrests and trips to Africa, we got 4 of those rooms done.  During the summer months we did a lot of work on the outside, restoring decks, and painting the trim, redoing the front windows that were installed wrong a year ago (don't get me started!), had our laundry room rebuilt literally from the ground up, and somewhere in there insulating the attic and basement!  whew!  This fall, besides siding around the now correctly installed windows (pretty much, don't get me started!) we have finished the laundry room- it is almost complete, we still have to put in a cabinet but just haven't picked it out yet, and we are redoing the three rooms in the front- the Library, the front entrance foyer and the playroom.

Which brings me to this:  have you been to Home Depot's paint area lately?  They have this amazing machine that can make any color.  I mean, really, any color.  You bring it in and they will match it.  They have hundreds of paint samples with great names, but really, if you come back 6 months later they won't know that name... they have moved on to the next trending colors. .. You can bring in a chip of the paint you know fondly as Fawn, but soooooo much better is the code that is printed on the sticker on the top of each can they give you.

Tip:  as soon as you buy a paint, take a picture of that label with your phone.  Then, when 6 months- 2 years from now when you want that same ceiling color, and they don't recognize Fawn, and of course, the label has paint drippings right were their code used to be; you can find the photo in your phone and they can punch in the numbers...Because frankly, it is all about the numbers, not the cute name.

The one downside to being able to create any color is they have so many colors to look at- there must be 70 whites!  And each is ever so slightly different, and so the challenge of finding the perfect one, the one meant for your space, is a daunting one.  I kinda wish in my heart there were only 50 colors total. You then would make do with one of them and be done so much quicker.  But I suspect there is no reversing this trend, so we forge ahead, in search of the perfect room colors, and hope we love what we wind up with....So far we have been happy so, yay for us!