Magazines that tell me what that fabulous color is.

November 10, 2008 7:16 PM

What decorating magazines will show me rooms in different colors, and then tell me what those colors are? And who makes it?

I'm repainting the interior of my house, and am looking for inspiration. I often see colors I like in magazine design articles, but they rarely mention what the color is. Attempts to match are unsuccessful and frustrating.

I found one magazine, House Beautiful, that seems to be pretty good about letting me know what that fab color is and who the manufacturer is, but are there others?

Thanks!

posted by Mimzy to home & garden (4 comments total)

Domino magazine often mentions the color used. You might want to check out their website. Here is a gallery from the site that includes color sources, but there are others on the site as well.
posted by katie at 7:28 PM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

Seconding Domino.

I work at a magazine that has a substantial home decorating component. (Not Domino.) For background, there are a couple of reasons for your frustration:

1) High-end designers (the kind who have homes profiled in design magazines) often use custom-mixed colors.

2) Also, there's the matter of photography. Paint colors in photos rarely look like the actual color because of: low-e glass windows, which makes everything look blue; incandescent lights, which make everything look yellow; curtains, which filter the light whatever color the curtains are; weird exposures used by rogue photographers, blah blah. So it seems stupid to say in the caption that this room is painted in Benjamin Moore's Pumpkin, when the room's walls look burnt siena. You're not going to achieve that effect in the room with the color that we'd mention, so we leave it out.

If you're serious about home decor, tear the pages out anyway. Somewhere, there is a mythical paint store with helpful employees who will be able to achieve your effect without the stupid "paint-matching" machines that don't work very well. Please let me know when you find this paint store; I never have.
posted by purpleclover at 8:55 PM on November 10, 2008

Behr
Go to Explore Color > Start Color Smart
posted by leigh1 at 2:17 AM on November 11, 2008

Benjamin Moore puts out a magazine that makes a real effort to accurately represent colors and has an insert with paint swatches of the featured colors. It should be available at your local dealer. They also have a couple of books that show rooms and specify which colors were used (info for those is on the page linked above as well). Their web site also has lots of pictures with paint info, but of course the color representation will be less accurate.

While I'm at it, let me put in a plug for their Aura line of paints. Very expensive, but the colors are all made to go with one another, are absolutely gorgeous, really do cover in one coat, and are low-VOC. I am a total convert. Even the whites are really stunning and reflect light in a beautiful way.
posted by HotToddy at 9:46 AM on November 11, 2008