When facing a big interior painting job, clarity was a pigment of her imagination

If you want to double the stress in your life, or maybe distract yourself from reality, consider an interior painting project. I recently surprised myself by getting into such a dripping mess. I hired it out, but still.

It happened almost overnight. A far-fetched dream turned into an estimate landing in my email. Somehow, I found painters who could finish the job before my Thanksgiving hosting gig. That latter fact is about to triple my stress levels, but I’m here to discuss all things latex.

I may not look the part, but I have single-handedly painted rooms with up to 12-foot ceilings. Like, meticulously. Thank you, FrogTape. Not this time. The interior changes I have been thinking about for years involve a tricky staircase and some vaulted areas. These surfaces do not mesh with my current age-to-ladder-climbing death calculus.

Once I set up the start date with the pros, I had little time to narrow down the exact paint color. This was maddening. Most of the flow from room to room and up the stairs would be the trickiest paint shade of all: white.

That sounds so simple. White paint, duh. But let me tell you, there is no such thing as white paint. You go to Sherwin Williams or the hardware store and you discover there are more shades of “white” than stars in the sky. And some of them do weird things once splattered on the wall. They can look too clinical or trick you into seeing ghosts of a faint lime Popsicle stain.

Maybe I should have pulled in an expert for advice, but it was a designer’s suggestion from years ago that got me into this mess. In retrospect, I went with a trendy scheme that was on its last gasp. (Jumping in too late is my thing.) I remember saying to this expert, “Wow, I never would have picked these colors on my own. Thanks!”

What I relied on for this second rodeo was internet advice. It was shockingly specific and abundant. I could see full articles and video blogs on the minutiae of every manufacturer’s offering. Ivory Lace versus Snowbound. Roman Column versus White Dove. Or, I could take a deep dive into the infinite beauty of one bucket of Alabaster. Any shade you can muster, you will find multiple diatribes on the internet.

The online opinions became so dizzying. I went back and forth to house paint retailers where overhead fluorescents and corners of simulated natural light merged to create weird contexts. Certain colors that look white are washed out beiges in the real world. I learned this by buying 8-by-8-inch peel and stick samples, liking some, then going back to the stores to get small cans of alleged life-changing hues.

After slopping large rectangles across several rooms in my house, the color I thought I was most sold on let me down. It looked like expired powdered coffee creamer mixed with a band aid tint that turned pink when vertical. And guess what? All walls are vertical.

I invested money and hours in a mislabeled hue. The lesson here is even an 8-by-8 inch peel-and-stick swatch can fool your tired, desperate eyes. In my case the larger swatch wasn’t any more helpful than the thumbnail paint chips. I firmly believe you have to get a sample can of actual paint and go all Jackson Pollock on your walls.

The problem is industry color names are not reflective of what they are. Forget Dolphin Eyeball and Mount Rushmore Fog (made these up but I’m certain Behr will soon claim them), I propose paint companies rename every color with accuracy. Shades of white, especially, should read like the following:

▪ Retro Toothpaste

▪ Instant Mashed Potato Flakes

▪ 1970’s Ceiling Tile

▪ Paper Cut

▪ Crushed Aspirin

For the record, I picked a shade of Mashed Potato Flakes. I’ll let you know how it works out.

It seems these days, honesty, and a trusty roll of Frog Tape, is all a girl can ask for.

Reach Denise Snodell at stripmalltree@gmail.com