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 feel your pain. I painted my very large living room, it’s about 5m x 5m, Gentle Fawn - primer, base coat and 2 top coats. I wanted to love it but I really didn’t, it too had a lilac tint that wasn’t visible on the sample patch I painted. I agonised over it for a couple of days, got a friend round for her opinion and she instantly said “of course it’s lilac and it looks like an Essex boudoir. Repaint it right away and you’ll have forgotten the pain as soon as it’s done.” I did repaint and she was right. No way could I have lived with the lilac. So my advice to you is to just repaint it. But complain to Brewers so you don’t have to pay for the replacement paint. If you want Tailor Tack just colour match it, Brewers will have the code in their system as they sell F&B.

Totally agree. Repainting will be a doddle now you’ve done everything else.

And that can be determined through discussion, rather than a unilateral decision that will force a repaint.

I'm not saying don't repaint, but just consider how forcing his hand by painting a tester pot on the wall might cause arguments and tension.

They've spent 5 days getting it to like this, considering all that prep work has been done I'd guess maybe 2 days to repaint. Assuming two coats. That's a whole weekend gone

Sadly not true. I painted my kitchen brilliant white and it looked blue, I had to paint over it. It was so blue I thought it must be the wrong colour paint, but no. North-east facing kitchen. Plays havoc with every colour I try.

I’d swerve all soft pinks if you’re not getting good light.
we have a dark dining room with only borrowed light from the kitchen and I used stirabout. Beautiful and warm but no peach or worse, dirty pink tones. Try that, but just get the real thing. Getting a dupe is often a false economy.

They've done something wrong mixing it, typed the wrong code in or picked the wrong colour. I'd ask for new replacement paint and compensation. Go back tell them you'd like a tester pot and then compare to your tin. Take the photos.

It is really weird how light can affect paint colour. I've sometimes painted rooms and been aghast at the results, which look totally different - yet holding the sample card next to the wall verifies the colour match.

If I were you, I'd make it my own job to repaint the walls one weekend. Re the F&B colour you had your heart set on, you could use a cheaper colour match for the first layer and F&B just to finish it all off:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/home_decoration_pictures/5359061-the-great-is-farrow-ball-paint-worth-it-debate-results-of-experiment

And then, if the F&B colour looks shit too, then obviously you have to divorce so that you can go and live in a convent somewhere!

I have had similar experience with Brewers where the colour I ended up was deeper than the sample. However I liked it so kept. I would normally say I don't like lilac but I actually do like your hall colour. But it's not the colour you wanted and if it really bothers you, I would repaint. Not sure if your DS is going to like pale pink either though.

OP I've done literally the same thing, but wasn't even half as diligent as you with prep and testing haha. Went to B&Q, saw a sample swatch that I thought aligned with what I wanted and just went for it. 2 coats later and I hate it. I wanted white with a tiny touch of green, I've got a very minty, wintery green hallway now.

I was quite down about it and DH who initially didn't like the swatch sample anyway tried very hard to make me feel better about it, bless him. I'm going to give it a few months and re-paint in the summer I think, I just really don't like it.

I feel your pain OP, I have done similar where the colour over the whole walls looked very different than the tester. Don't know why people are giving you a hard time and saying you should have done it quicker and should have known better, honestly I don't know what is up with people! I'm not surprised it took that long, hall/stairs/landing is absolutely the worst room to do because of all the woodwork and awkward bit above the stairs, and because people have to keep walking through it. I mostly do my own decorating but I paid someone to do ours while we were away, worth every penny.

Anyway, repainting the actual walls won't be a huge task so if you really hate it I think you just have to do it. Don't know how much pink you need but we did ours Nutmeg White which I absolutely love. It's a warm neutral with pinky tones in it, sometimes it looks like a soft grey, sometimes more gentle pink. I'm attaching pics but they don't seem to pick it up all that well, it is slightly more pinky than that.

I feel your pain.
We once have blossom white in our living room it was just a very very soft pink.
I think a mistake has been made with the mixing. I would go back to stop and complain. Buy a tester pot and compare first though.
But I can’t believe how some of your family are acting, there is giving your opinion and going on and and on about it!

I wonder if the paint was mixed wrong? Although I find pink colours don’t do very well in rooms with little natural light tbh. I really wanted pink in my downstairs loo which does have a window but doesn’t get any direct sunlight - after much deliberation I went with Lick Pink 01 which is more on the peachy side but I’m happy with it in the space!

I think he's mixed this up and you've got one of these. I would go back with the leftover paint and simply ask. If you have gotten the wrong colour then at least you and your DH can not argue about it.
https://www.dulux.co.uk/en/colour-details/pretty-pink

https://www.dulux.co.uk/en/colour-details/dusted-fondant

5 days to do a full hallway top to bottom with all the prep work and wood finishings while doing a FT jobs is about right. Very easy to repaint walls in perfect condition when the woodwork doesn't need doing.

We had this exact problem in our ensuite.

The decorator painted it all pink for me, which should have been very similar to the colour you choose, which turned out to be an absolutely VILE pinky lilac. I absolutely hated it, so did DH. I had the same 'You always do this, you never listen'

Anyway, I got the decorator to change it and now its olive green and I love it, so moral of the story, just change it or you will hate it forever.

Wow, thanks guys. Loads of really helpful advice and support here!
And I'm reassured by people saying they see lilac in my photo too!
And it's absolutely true that re-painting the walls won't take 5 days.
2 days. 1st day first coat. 2nd day second coat.
Or maybe I should paint it all white again before I put a new colour on, like I did before we painted on this colour. In which case 3 days.
Anyhow we've made the surface of the walls look perfect with all our filling and finishing and undercoat, so it will be easier to re-paint.
I absolutely did not know there were companies who match F&B and LG! What a brilliant discovery! Are they decent with how accurate they are?
I need to navigate DH though. He's pretty set on liking the lilac. If he hated it too it would be easier. Although I personally think he'd like any colour that was painted on. He's very un-discerning about colour shades. He just cannot bear the thought of re-doing it all.

I'm jealous. I want to do this too but sadly it's not just an ensuite / small room which needs changing 😭

That happened to me once, and it turned out to be a faulty batch of paint. Unfortunately, our decorator didn’t notice and kept applying a hideous shade of a colour I never wanted and absolutely hated! (“Oh, I did wonder because you usually choose such nice colours,” he said!) Just claim that’s what happened and never admit you changed your mind, LOL!

Here are a couple of tips for next time. First, paint the colour you’re considering on a large sheet of paper and move it around the space you want to decorate, securing it with a bit of masking tape. Colours can look very different in various spots and at different times of day.

Also, Brewers (the decorating shop) can colour-match your F&B shades using Johnson’s paint. Just tell them the F&B colour you want, and they’ll handle the rest. It’s a cheaper alternative to F&B.

I've had a similar dilemma, I wanted a dark green on the chimney breast and alcoves and a lighter green on the walls,, turned out darker than I expected but I've grown to like it having lived with it for 4 months! I was told by Brewers never to go to two different branches for the same colour, eg had I needed more, as the machines can be very slightly off.

A friend's dad used to be a painter and decorator. He recommends that if you want a Farrow & Ball colour, take the F&B shade card to a Brewers and get them to match it in a decent brand of paint.

@TailorTack

I absolutely did not know there were companies who match F&B and LG! What a brilliant discovery! Are they decent with how accurate they are?

As I said in my above post they’re totally inaccurate.

When people colour match, if they haven’t seen the FB/LG colour on the wall, they’re none the wiser that the shade they’ve been given isn’t a match.

But if you know the colours well - it’s very obvious.

Don’t lump it - it will annoy you every day and it’s not as if you can avoid it, as it’s your hallway. It won’t take more than a day to fix, even allowing for 2 coats. Valspar make decent copies of F&B.

I’ve made mistakes like this in the past - I did my north facing bedroom Cinder Rose despite being told it would look cold and purply, and now in the middle of switching to Templeton Pink. I also painted our living room shit brown, instead of the lovely latte colour I had envisaged.

yabu because painting a small hallway shouldn’t take a week! even with prep and undercoat and also tester pot is very close to final result no? colour on screen means nothing

and YNBU at all to want the colour you love and buy the colour you love. get the right undercoat too and test it all in the actual room on the actual wall beforehand

Oh it is very lilac..
I'm sorry I'd have to change it. I'd just stick to white like another poster said and then use wall hangings etc to add colour.
Paint is so fickle and dependent on lighting.