The Best Way to Color Match Paint to Wallpaper (or any other surface)
THE FARMHOUSE
The other day I took a sample of the kids bathroom wallpaper into the paint store for a color match. I shared the process on Instagram and wanted to share it here too because it’s such a handy trick! I’ve done this with cabinet doors and chips of peeling paint and random objects - anything I wanted paint to match exactly. Let me show you how…
I love this wallpaper so much! But when it came time to decide on colors for the trim, I was overwhelmed. Should I match it to the grasshopper green? The bay leaf blue/green? The gold? Pink? I finally decided to take a wallpaper sample in and have them match a few of the greens to start.
Ideally you have a sample of the wallpaper or whatever you want color matched, but if not, you can get creative. Cut out a bit of wallpaper from behind the vanity, remove a cabinet door, etc. And then take it into your paint store.
Did you know most paint stores have a color scanner? I showed an employee at our local Benjamin Moore store (Standard Paint in Ellensburg for you locals), the exact spot in the wallpaper that I wanted color matched and then they put it under their scanner.
Their system spit out a custom color formula for the exact match and even kept the formula on file for me. They also provided a few close matches of existing colors in their collection. You can see on the screen below the large custom color match on the left (which we named “leaf green”) and the smaller squares on the right are similar BM colors.
So handy! I took swatches of the BM colors they recommended along with my wallpaper sample to some daylight and had a look. Then I picked out two of the blue/greens they recommended and had them make samples of those along with the custom color match.
We repeated that process for the light green on the grasshopper and I took home 8 sample pots in total, including 2 custom formulas. In the pic below, the 5 colors on the left are matched to the grasshopper and the 3 on the right are matched to the blue-ish green leaves in the wallpaper.
The colors are (from left to right)…
Cedar Grove 444
Lily Pad 480
‘Grass hopper green’ - custom color match (formula below)
Paris Green HC-118
Kennebunkport Green HC-123 (note that this one wasn’t a match from the scanner, but I thought it was from eyeballing it and really liked the color)
‘Leaf green’ - custom color match (formula below)
Pacific Rim 678
Caribbean Teal 2123-20
Originally I planned to paint all the trim and vanity in one of these colors, but I’m second guessing re-painting the vanity. I might leave the vanity and pick one of these greens for the trim. Or I might go back to the paint store to color match the cream on the wallpaper for the trim Or…well time will tell. Sitting with this decisions for a bit so stay tuned!
