Weird paint - changes colour??!

[FusionChefGeoff]

Spent fricking hours staring at neutral paints, samples and then painted patches on lining paper before making final decisions for hall stairs and landing.

Chose 2 F&B colours which toned beautifully together.

Was ASSURED by our decorator that his trade place could colour match - as I'm not fussed by actual paint quality, just liked the colours.

The colour is on now and it's totally weird - in some places it looks the same as the tester patch on lining paper. So from a distance it's the right colour and also close up it matches the sample.

But in others it looks like a completely different colour?!?! So I wanted a yellow toned off white - but in some places it's peach?!? Then when I put the tester patch up against it, even my colour challenged DH agrees they are different colours.

As such, where the 2 colours are in one area, they look bloody stupid as they don't tone together.

This took hours of pissing about with testers etc and has cost hundreds of pounds in paint (it's a massive area) and hundreds on decorator and it looks SHIT I am so cross but don't know how to fix it?!?

What the hell is going on?!

Lighting can affect colours dramatically. Did you notice the colour ‘difference’ in natural or artificial light? If the latter, you could try different light sources.

This is at night so not natural. But if that's the case, why does the patch on the paper look different to the colour on the wall?

If it's lighting then shouldn't it affect the sample too?

Not always. The texture of the surface can alter how it looks, combine with artificial light and the colour can look completely different.

You can get bulbs now which allow cool, warm and natural lighting options which may help make it look right at night.

See how it looks in daylight before doing anything though.

Is there a place where you can see it change? If the paint came out of different tins, is it possible that one tin wasn't mixed properly? If that's the case you would see where one started and the other ended. Or is the plaster different in one are? Again - you'd see where this patch starts if that's the case.

Otherwise, it's just one of those weird trick of the light things, and any color could end up doing that.

What was it like before you painted it?

It is 2 different tins but he used 1 for 1 coat then 1 on top iyswim so the colour should be consistent.

It might be different plaster downstairs as the area flows through into an extension.

I will definitely be experimenting with lightbulbs as that's the only thing I can think of.

I think I will also have to ditch the complementary wall colour as it looks so odd and paint it all 'one' colour so at least the only colour change is within the paint!!!

I have been looking forward / saving to getting this done for a year and having gone cross eyed staring at paint samples I can't believe how bad it looks

My DH has banned me from tester pots now because a whole wall IRL can look so different to a small square. So much depends on what's around it. Honestly, we wanted 2 bathrooms to look different colours once (one lighter and one darker) and ended up painting them the SAME colour to achieve this. F&B colours are particularly tricksy IMO, because they're so complex. That said colour matching can go a bit weird too.

Leave it a few days, see what they're like in daylight and repaint any walls that are still weird.

So it sounds like you didn't test on the actual wall? Testing on paper unfortunately can give a different finish due to the underlying colour of the paper Vs the base coat of the wall. We also discovered this the hard way!

So it's matched paint, not what you did test swatches of?

Our decorator told us to do the paint on paper technique!! I'd normally do it on walls but he said not to as it makes it hard to then paint over.

Yes, it's colour matched and I've just checked a sample of the matched on the same paper which I did last night and it's a pretty poor match tbh. It's blatantly not the same colour - do you think I've got any recourse with the paint place (it's a trade shop which our decorator has an account at) or will they just shrug and say 'we did say it's a match not exact)??

I have this in one of the bedrooms.

Section of wall looks a different colour to the rest of the wall.

Even sample looks different.

I can only think it is lighting.

I painted the wall again with the same results. So have stuck a wardrobe in front and ignored it although it does annoy me when I go on the room

Ah ok... So you painted the paper with the original F&B but didn't do a test with the colour match? That's the main issue then. Colour matches are never exact - as you've seen, light and texture affect how a colour looks so much, and so the match is to one viewing of that.
If you truly hate it, could you do a top coat with the original F&B paint? Cheaper than a full repaint.
We did this with one room - though frankly regret it, as the f&b paint marks so easily and doesn't clean well, Dulux and Johnstone (or little Greene if budget allows) are SO much better!

I'm thinking I might do that in the worst areas but I can't justify the expense all the way through. I'll ask the decorator what he thinks of the match and if I've just got to suck it up - but he's not back until the weekend now

I think they will say the latter, but you've nothing to lose by trying.

Repainting with the real thing is a good shout. It is normal for walls to look slightly different because of the angles, so you don't need to repaint the whole room. The eye expects subtle changes in colour where 2 corners meet so it's quite forgiving of them.

I have a similar problem... I tested paint on a small patch on the wall and on lining paper but it looks completely different now that the room is painted - much brighter and it makes the existing colour on the doors (which I really liked) look horrible. Ours is Dulux but the colour was mixed in store to a Dulux trade finish, so I figured that was the difference but when I painted the sample pot and the actual paint next to each other on paper as a test afterwards, they look pretty similar, it just seems to be really different on the walls. The only reason I can think why is that it is a less matt finish on the walI itself, as it was painted two costs over a paler but similar colour, I just don't get why it looks so much brighter. I just want to paint it back to the colour that it was before and probably will do next year (if I can persuade DH) but the paint was expensive and we used a decorator. I felt like crying when I first saw it!

I got a refund from Wickes when they colour matched Farrow and Ball ..... it came out pink, a very similar shade of grey, but definitely pink toned!

Just to add, we'd used half a tin. That's how long it took to realise that it really was pink! They refunded no problem.