Effing Paint Disaster

[Honeymum]

We bought quantities of Dulux Chalk White No.1, which we had mixed at Homebase. A friend had used it (though tbh, not sure if it was no.1) and I liked it. It is white with a grey'ish tinge. This is it.

Or so we thought.

Got it on the walls and it is LILAC. There is nothing white about it. It looks nothing like the paint card. And nothing like white. It is definitely not "Neutral". It is PURPLE.

Have I got a hope in hell of returning it? (Notices up in store saying once it's mixed you have to pay for it etc etc) What do you think wise mumsnetters?

I am .

Will it be OK when all your furniture is in the room? Paint colours do glow brightly when there's nothing else to look at.

Did you get a tester pot? You could paint some on a bit of card and take it back to the shop if you suspect a mistake, check the serial numbers/labels on the tin are correct.

Otherwise if you really hate it you might as well stump up for a tin of something else rather than have a grudge for years. But I am often guilty of thinking some DIY thing is life and death and before you know it you've lived with it for five years.

Thing is, I want to use one colour pretty much throughout the house. So I can't live with it.

I am going to paint some on a piece of card and then argue til I'm red in the face that there's been a mistake.

Didn't get a tester pot, unfortunately. BUT it is so PURPLE and not white. If it was called chalky lilac mist it would be a fair cop, but it's CHALKY WHITE (can you tell I'm a bit cross??!). Someone in Homebase is going to get it and not in a good way.

If it is a base for another paint you may be able to get it re-mixed to a light grey rather than white with a hint of grey....it's better than lilac!

looking at that dulux "fresh neutrals" colour card you can see that Chalky White is in the pink category of whites.

How much have you bought? How about using it as a base coat and then top coat in a colour you like better.

Don't think you have a leg to stand on - no point in going in ranting at some poor person on a crap wage in Homebase for a decision made on a name by a well paid marketing person in Dulux. If you genuinely think your paint has been mixed incorrectly then buy a tester pot and compare but you will win no arguments suggesting that it was incorrectly named - you are always advised to check the cloured with a tester. F&B call lots of shade white but they are anything but.

I think we've got some options:

1. Paint it on a piece of white paper and ask the shop to compare it to the card and see how far we get. It's a completely different colour, honest.
2. If we get nowhere then take the paint to the local Dulux Centre and see if there's anything they can do to help...
3. Use it as undercoat...it's Endurance paint though so it would be a pricey undercoat so we're reluctant.

Watch this space...

I know it's not helpful to be wise after the event - but this is exactly why you should always paint an extended tester area (like half a wall) before buying in quantity. The shade cards aren't mean to be used for things like this - and in fact they can't be completely accurate because the same paint can look totally different in matt and vinyl, even though the colour itself is exactly the same.

Also the same paints can look startlingly different in different situations - we had a sort of slatey grey/blue in our bedroom at our last house which we loved so we decided to reuse the same shade for the new house. In the old house it looked like a kind of pale grey with a bluish tint. In the new house it looks like duck-egg blue! Completely different, just because of the way the room is lit and how much sun it gets. But it's 100% the same paint - some of it is even the same cans as we used the old can as a tester.

I'm afraid unless you can prove that the paint has been wrongly mixed (ie by getting a tester tin of the same finish and shade from a different store and taking it along as a comparison) then I don't think you have a leg to stand on. It's worth a try of course - it's not like you've got anything to lose.

i had this recently with a sanderson colour greige. looked lovely on the colour chart, a soft greyish off white. on the ceiling, dark grey! i held a painted card up to the ceiling and it was properly mixed, it just did not work for that area.

on the walls, we had a grey lavender. it came up really purple. actually, i have now realised it was also correctly mixed, but it is grey in the morning with the sun and lavender in the evening.

i'd definitely paint a large section of card and move it around. also compare to the sample card.

i feel your pain, we agonised over it and ended up painting the ceiling a warm white as we just couldn't bear the grey.

Argh paint is such a pain! It always seems to end up being darker than you had hoped for in my vast painting experience