Color Me Crazy

First the living room. I want it to be a soft green. Not as blue-green as a robin's egg, not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. The only sample I could get is a little too yellow. But don't let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue. It should just be a sort of grayish yellow-green.

Now the dining room I'd like yellow. Not just yellow, a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshine. I'll tell you if you'll send one of your workmen to the grocer for a pound of their best butter and match that exactly, you can't go wrong.

This is the paper we're going to use in the hall. It's flowered but I don't want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers. There's some little dots in the background and it's these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom.

Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic, hospital white. A little warmer, but still not to suggest any other color but white.

For the powder room in here, I want you to match this thread. And don't lose it, it's the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it. As you can see, it's practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened Jonathan."

Myrna Loy in Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House

I was thinking of this wonderful scene when I was painting the bathroom a nice robin's egg blue. Mrs. Blandings was ahead of her time. Although she goes to great lengths to explain the exact shade she wants each room painted in her new home, even going so far as to supply examples, as soon as she leaves the room the painter tells his assistant " You got that? Green, yellow, blue, white and red." Apparently, back in the forties, paint only came in 7 colors including white.

If only Mrs. Blandings lived in the era of the custom paint center. She could bring in her butter, her wallpaper and her thread and if they didn't match the hundreds of paint chips already on display, she could have the color analyzed and matched by computer.

But what really boggles the mind is that all those hundreds of colors have names; it is somebody's job to come up with 100 names for "white." The sample in front of me at the moment has 6 variations of white: Extreme White, Snowbank, Icy Pond, Blue Hue, Metamorphosis, and Icy Ballet.

So Dave and I were thinking there is probably room for niche marketing out there. We could start a little paint boutique and sell small, decorated pots of special paint for special groups.

Pet Owners
Goldfish bowl green
Muddy Paw Print Brown
Furball Grey
Chow Tongue Blue
Hide the Hair Beige

Aging Punk Rockers
Nicotine Stain Yellow
Ripped Denim Blue
Pierced Flesh Pink
G. G. Allin Brown
Urinal White

Lawyers/Stockbrokers/Bankers
Executive White
Executive Grey
Executive Black

Fundamentalist Christians
Noah's Ark Brown
Sea of Galilee Blue
Lamb of God White
Precious Blood Red
Brimstone Black

CSI Aficionados
Arterial Plaque White
Gunshot Residue Grey
Body Fluid Yellow
Necrotic Flesh Green
DNA Test Result Blue
Splatter Pattern Red

Obsessive Compulsives
Hand Washing White
Ceaseless Vacuuming White
Lightswitch Plate Licking White