Our main floor is open concept, with curved edges on the wall corners. This meant there was no good place to stop painting, and we needed ONE perfect paint color for that huge space and all the way up the stairs into the upstairs hallway.

After painting our Master Bathroom and agreeing "would never do this color again but don't hate it enough to repaint right now," I was having some serious cold feet about picking a paint color for all these square feet.

With all the warm tones in the flooring and cabinets, we knew we wanted something cooler on the walls. And I wanted a white ceiling. Don't paint ceilings brown. At night time, we could turn on every light on the main floor and I still felt like I needed a head lamp.

Or some warm waffles on my hands.

Ignore the waffles; note the terrible lighting and need for a head lamp. Cue the test pots:

AKA money well spent!

The top color is the poorly-reviewed "Gray Owl" (Benjamin Moore) from our master bath. That color is like the boyfriend you keep breaking up with and then getting back together. And everyone else knows you are stupid. It looks great in other people's pictures online. When we looked at the paint chip downstairs, we kept loving it again! We ended up hating it on the wall. Glad to rule that one out. Closure.

The second color is "La Paloma Gray" (also Ben Moore). A pretty gray -- not too brown or too blue. Too dark.

The clear winner was the third color, "Cumulus Cloud" (Ben Moore). We went all out with the paint swatches, painting larger areas on different walls with different lighting and next to cabinets, appliances, trim. We waited a full day to see them in different lights. We emailed poorly lit pictures to opinionated and non-opinionated family members. Cumulus cloud was still the winner!

Before: "Something Beige"

After:

Between the before and after, there was a whole lot of couldn't-have-done-it-without-them labor provided by my parents who visited for the weekend and are gracious enough to spend their time off listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and chatting while cutting in and rolling with their paint supertool.

In person, our main floor is so much lighter and has such a clean, peaceful feel. The new color makes me want to sew curtains! This must be feng shui. Peaceful urge to sew curtains. Except that our stairs point out our front door, and feng says that means we will lose all our money. (Disclaimer, I learned everything I know about feng rules (nothing) from watching idiots on house hunters purchase terrible houses.)