Everything You Need to Know About Painting Your House, Except for How to Do It

Color, texture, finish, and your very soul

I. Nothing (Gray) Is as It Seems, and Other Painting Perils

I squinted to read the print against the extremely similarly-colored sample card. Kitten’s Whisker. It looked at first to be an off-white, but on further squintination it focused into a thin hue of light gray, I was sure. Or was I? I flexed my eyelids again, opening my mouth to aid my vision as I had a habit of doing. I held the card up closer to the soft light in the Sherwin Williams display credenza. Was there… something else? Some slight tint of… blue? Wait… was it…? No. It couldn’t be.

“Honey,” I asked my wife, “do you see some… green in this?”

I almost doubted myself, but I was nearly certain there was some green in Kitten’s Whisker.

They would put green in there, I thought to myself. I’d developed some strong opinions about various paint retailers in the preceding months.

“No, babe. That’s gray,” she assured me, albeit without looking at the sample card.

Hmm. “Gray game,” I muttered agreeably. But I knew.