Hunting For The Perfect Shade Of Gray

Last Updated on December 28, 2015 by Kristi Linauer

The other day, Alice and I were talking about plans for updating the kitchen in their home. I gave you the tour of the current kitchen and family room a few days ago, but let me remind you what the cabinets look like.

I had originally planned on painting all of the cabinets a creamy white, but as the start of the project drew closer, I began to wonder if a color on the cabinets might be a better choice…or perhaps two colors used together. So I asked Alice if she had any ideas, and in fact she did. She had recently seen a kitchen over on Cote de Texas that she really liked.

Isn’t that beautiful?!  I absolutely love those gray lower cabinets in combination with the white upper cabinets and the white backsplash.  So while John & Alice’s kitchen won’t look exactly like this, this will be the inspiration for the colors.  The differences?  I will be using butcherblock countertops and beadboard backsplash, and they have black appliances.

So I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect shade of gray.  The color used in the kitchen pictured above was Farrow & Ball’s Mouse’s Back.  Here’s what the “paint chip” looks like from their website.

Now I could just purchase this paint and run with it, but there are two problems.  First, Farrow & Ball is a British paint and wallpaper company, so finding a supplier here is challenging (the nearest store is 110 miles away).  Second, it’s quite expensive.  Also (and I’m starting to sound like a broken record here) when it comes to painting cabinets, I’m pretty partial to Kelly Moore interior oil-based paints, and they’re great at color-matching any color I bring to them.

So the other day I spent about half an hour just mulling over the color options at Home Depot.  I really love the new line of Martha Stewart colors, and I found a couple of grays that I really liked.  But then I thought I had found the perfect gray with Behr’s Elephant Skin.  I was having to go by memory with the Farrow & Ball color since I didn’t have a paint swatch to take with me.  It turns out, the two are really quite different.  Here’s the Elephant Skin color.

I never know what to think about those paint chips online. I’d much rather see the paint actually used on something–in a real room used by a real homeowner–so I searched and this is pretty much all I found. This marble coffee table makeover is from the blog Claiming Your Space.

I love the way it looks on the coffee table, and I also like that she describes this gray as a fabulous color with a hint of tan, which is what the Mouse’s Back looks like. But I don’t like that she describes it as a “dark gray”.

So, it looks like I’m still on the search for the perfect light-to-medium gray with a touch of brown. Darn. I was so hoping to use Elephant Skin on the cabinets! (Okay, that just sounded downright strange.)

Have you used the perfect shade of gray on a paint project? If so, please share!