The first color we picked for the outside (which was corroborated by neighbors, friends and passing new acquaintances on bicycles) was called elephant gray.
Despite it’s name it was actually a nice deep grey with just a faintest suggestion of mauve to it. Unfortunately the painter said it was too dark and would rapidly fade, and since we aren’t tripping over extra tens of thousands of dollars we are just dying to spend on paint every 5 years we decided to find something lighter.
The painter then suggested we try the primer tinted elephant gray at 50% to see what that looked like.
This is what it looked like. Weird sad mauve:
I figured it was a good thing we didn’t plan on doing the whole house in this color, but a few passing neighbors thought it was the final color and said they liked it. Oddly it was also pretty close to the color I was originally arguing strenuously in favor of (and learning that Americans say the word mauve very differently than I do 🙂 )
And here it was and I quite disliked it. Looked already kind of sad and dirty already. Next up almost painted…