Hallway colour crisis

[TailorTack]

Well this was the colour I wanted. Tailor Tack. For our tiny little entrance, stairway and upstairs little landing. Can't even call it a hallway really because we have no hallway. I wanted to make it look lovely. But we couldn't justify the cost of F&B.
So based on me wanting a pale white pink, DH bought Blossom White Dulux and we've just spent the week prepping and decorating, it has taken 5 days, using precious annual leave time to do it whilst DC are at school and out of the way.
It's nothing like it looked online or in the colour chart pamphlet, or in the tester patch.
Online and in the Dulux colour chart it looked a very pale chilled out pink.
In my hall it is.....basically bright lilac.
It's not the colour I wanted at all😰
DH has hit the roof and said "You do this every time! We decorate a room after weeks on end of looking at different shades of different colours, then when it's done you always say you don't like it!!!". Which I can't deny. But the colours never look the same on the walls as they do on the charts, or even the tester pot patches!
Oh, forgot to say, we started off painting it what looked like a lovely sedate green on the colour chart but it looked like grey sludge on my walls so we abandoned it 1/4 way through and that caused a row in itself. And a waste of money.
I wanted a nice, very pale, calm, muted white pink.
What I've got is bright lilac, maybe you could call it bright but pale lavender.
It literally looks NOTHING like the Dulux images of the colour on their website.
It looks nothing like other images of it online.
It's done now and I will be able to live with it though I am upset because I wanted to love it. I wanted to walk in and love the colour that greeted me. Instead I think "urgh, don't like it".
DH likes it!
DD 10 is skipping around saying it's the best colour ever!!!
But DS 14 absolutely HATES it. He literally hates it. He's saying "I love our house, why have you painted the hallway bright purpley-pink?!?! It's horrible!".
This morning DH said to DS "Is the colour growing on you?" And DS said "I can't even talk about it" whilst looking mortified.
I feel really bad for him.
Should I lump it, having both spent a week of AL working on it? And just tell DS he'll have to live with it?
Or change it and risk a massive fall out with DH? He won't take any more AL to do it all over again so it'd be me on my own. And he'll argue about the time and cost involved.
And if I buy another 7.5 litres of a different colour paint, I may as well have just paid more for F&B and got Tailor Tack in the first place😪
We have an absolutely tiny little house with a tiny little hallway. I wish we could move to a more spacious house but we can't. So I thought 'Okay, just make the best of what we've got' and I was trying to create a beautiful entrance/stairs/landing. I've seen tiny houses on Pinterest/Instagram that still look lovely if they're decorated absolutely beautifully and tastefully. That's what I was trying to achieve but have failed.
So
Leave it be, or go through the pain of changing it?

I’m in the “it’s too late now” camp. You should have realised within the first pot it wasn’t right.

Especially if the tin was correctly labelled.

I just wanted to say if you ask for the Dulux copy of any other company's colour the paint shop can match it well

Out of interest, did you not test the paint on your walls?

Dulux doesn't do a 'Blossom Pink' paint though, it does a Blossom Tree (slightly more lilac than Blossom White), a Dulux Heritage Blossom and a Peach Blossom (v pink).

You are getting a harsh time on here OP, but it is AIBU. You might have had a bit more support on Chat or one of the home deco/reno forums.

There is something particuarly heart breaking about investing time, effort and money in home improvements only to find it wasn't quite what you were expecting.

The fact that you wanted a Farrow and Ball colour is kind of neither here nor there as you ordered and paid for Blossom White by and in Dulux! FWIW I think it looks very different from how it is advertised and I would query it with the people who mixed the paint.

One final thing, from somebody who just came home and cried as the grouting in my freshly installed bathroom was 'the wrong grey' (it was supposed to be light grey and came out anthracite!) and then realised it was just because it was still wet! How long has it been since you painted? It may well dry out paler over the next day or two.

Oh you did, just RTFT.

You had some great advice, no need for smart pants replies. Hope you get it sorted. Only how did you not see this wasn't the right colour? The colour you originally chose is nice.

I think that the colour has been mixed wrong and it's worth going back to the shop. With Dulux it's best to buy off the shelf. You never really know what you're getting when they mix colours.

I'm assuming that the 5 days included a lot of prep work, wood work and ceilings. Changing the colour should be a half day per coat, so not as big a job.

Pink is trickey and it can be hard to pull off outside of a bedroom. If you have a tendency not to be happy with your choices maybe play it a bit safer.

If you're asking to match Farrow and Ball beware - the Farrow and Ball paint is nothing like the colour chart. I'm assuming it's a deliberate move to make it harder to match. If they match it to the colour chart it won't be the same shade as the actual F&B.

You can get paint mixed from various online sellers by specifying the brand and colour reference. I wanted a Farrow and Ball colour in my kitchen but wanted a more hard wearing and wipeable finish. I bought a specially mixed Crown Kitchen paint in the colour I wanted and it was a perfect match.

When you get the new tester do not paint it onto the wall. Get a piece of white card (inside old cereal box works well) and paint the card, then tape it to the wall with low tack tape (only need a tiny piece of tape). Do another piece of card with the paint from the tin and compare them side by side when they are dry. Then you’ll know for sure if the paints are actually different colours.
I do have to say though, I’ve often found when you paint an entire space the colour looks different to the tester, often because of the different lighting around the space. Painting a tester card instead of direct to the wall means you can move it around at different times to day to check the colour really is want you want.

100%. Looks fine to me OP. More pink than lilac. Though does look darker than the pale chalky, plaster pink you wanted.

But don’t despair. Almost any colour looks good if you roll with it and add the right decor touches: rugs, pictures, plants etc. Pale colours often look darker when on a large expanse of wall, like a stairwell, until you add furnishings. Some black-framed pictures should knock it back a bit.

More concerning is why your DH is blaming you - behaviour your DS seems to be copying. Did he not take equal responsibility for choosing the colour? If he really didn’t like it, why did he persist with painting the entire stairwell in it?

Agree you should check against the tester, as may well have been made up incorrectly. So, you may at least get a refund on the paint. But of course that doesn’t solve the problem of time to repaint.

B&Q would have colour matched the F&B tacky tailor colour if you'd bought the swatch in with you for a fraction of the price. They do F&B colours all the time.

Was saying 100% to @FasterMichelin, who said accessories help, but it didn’t quote-post.

Just paint over it, @TailorTack , you're not happy with it.

I’ve been disappointed with colour once a room has been painted. One trick I use now is paint test sections straight on the wall (all 4 walls), particularly next to windows, doorway trim etc. Your perception of the colour can really be affected by the old colour next to it, time of day and type of lighting used. I live with it for at least a few days AND I cut a small square out of a piece of paper and hold it up to look through to access the colour without the distraction of the old colour next to it. It allows me to gauge what it truly will look like next to our chosen trim colour.

Havent you ever bought tester pots?

It is definitely lilac I’d have to change it . 7.5 litres sounds an awful lot of paint for a tiny hallway stairs n small landing did it need 3 coats ? . Our b and q sell valspar paint which they mix up for you . You can give them a swatch card of farrow and ball or any other paint you can even take in an item like a cushion cover my friend did this and they’ll mix it to match .its 99% accurate match . We’ve used this probably 5 x now and it’s brilliant . It’s brilliant paint loads better than dulux and crown too

My husband could never recognise turquoise. Depending on the shade, he always said it was either green or blue.

Try this OP.

But usually the issue is that light is a big part of how we see colour, so it depends on how the light falls in the exact location in which you are putting it. I have used the same colour in different rooms and it looks quite different - and even one wall in a room can look different from others.

This does look quite different though, and that's why I always cough up for F&B in the first place: they just tend not to get horrible tones, even if they can look a little different. IMO those mix-up-matches are never quite the same as F&B which has led to our painter and I nearly murdering each other on occasion because he's obviously colourblind and won't admit it.

Even if you buy actual f&b paint it’s usually mixed in store so the final colour could potentially vary by store. I’ve had success lately using Johnstone’s trade mixed up by decorating centre online. www.decoratingcentreonline.co.uk

I've taken chips of actual paint into B&Q twice, and they've done an excellent job of matching them. (One was a bit of painted plaster, and the other was a bit of gloss paint that chipped off the woodwork)

We used to have a tiny house with a tiny north facing hallway and a north facing master bedroom and we had a similar issue . What worked best in the hall was Dulux Light and Space paint in Jasmine Shimmer. We had Dulux Mellow Mocha in the bedroom and it wasn’t what we wanted at all, looked Lilac like yours. We didn’t change that as we decided to move in the end. We had Craig and Rose chalky white in the lounge which was lovely.

We don’t use Dulux anymore as I think it looks so flat, we only use Craig and Rose now (goes on better than F&B in my opinion) but if I had to only choose Dulux again I’d got for something from the light and space range.

We have a fab decorator’s centre near us and their colour matching for F&B is spot on. We get the testers of F&B and there’s no difference, apart from the quality of the paint is much better than F&B.

I’d say they’ve mixed the wrong colour. At best they may give new paint free of charge, but still doesn’t help with fact you’d have to re-paint it. I would want to re-paint too, even though it’s a big job. I wouldn’t be taking 5 days AL though, just keep kids out of way and you and your DH get it done in a weekend.

It’s fabulous isn’t it I love it

Buy orange bulbs from Amazon, it will give it an overall warmer tone, worth a try.
But in the future just buy the F&B, lick & coat paints they are brilliant.
I have also been in this situation and ended up painting again with what I actually wanted, it was a lesson learnt.