We took the wallpaper down in the dining room over the weekend and now I’m trying to pick a paint color for the walls.  I’m really struggling with it because the colors look so different on the walls than they do on little paint samples.  We think we’d like to paint the room gray, but I’m having trouble picking the right shade.

Here’s a few of the colors we’re thinking about:

Paint Samples for the Dining Room

Paint Samples for the Dining Room

The one on the far left is Sherwin Williams Classic French Gray (SW0077).  It’s about as true of a gray as you can get with virtually no undertones of any other color in it, but I’m afraid it’s kind of dark and might be too stark against all of the other colors in our house, which are various shades of beige and brown.  The color in the middle is Sherwin Williams Mega Greige (SW7031).  It has a lot more brown in it, which I think will make it blend better with the rest of our house, but I’m afraid that the color would read brown instead of gray once it’s painted on all of the walls.  The color on the right is Sherwin Williams Pavestone (SW7642), which has slightly more gray in it than the Mega Greige sample, but I can’t decide if it also looks sort of blueish.

Our plan right now is to put picture moldings on the bottom half of the wall and paint everything below the chair rail the same color that the trim is in this picture.  We’re also thinking about extending the paneling that’s on the front of the window seat around the window and up to the crown molding.  If we do that, we’ll probably also paint that the trim color.  Whatever we pick for above the chair rail we’d probably do in a low sheen finish so it wouldn’t have the reflection the paint samples have now, but that will probably make it feel like it absorbs more of the light in the room too.

Window Seat in Dining Room

Window Seat in Dining Room

Any thoughts on which of these samples would be the best choice?  Or are there other shades of gray that might be better?

Update:  We wound up choosing Sherwin Williams Pavestone (SW7642) as the new paint color for our dining room.  Read more about our updates to the dining room (and see the “after” pictures) here.

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