Why choosing Resene paint colours has been a frustrating experience

I've mentioned previously that choosing colours for our villa has been more difficult than anticipated - and also a lot less fun than I thought it'd be.

Why?
Numerous reasons!

• Light colours look a lot darker in reality than they do on the paint charts.
• Dark colours look a lot lighter in reality than they do on the paint charts.
• Some paint colours don't even resemble their colour swatch. (We thought we'd found the perfect swatch colour - "Iron" - a neutral tone. In reality, it was very blue... Resene staff agreed that the real colour doesn't match the colour swatch.)
• I got a bit stuck after "Iron" not being the colour we wanted. Thankfully the helpful staff at Resene Wairau Park suggested an alternative - "Half Surrender"... I would never have discovered this colour by myself, because it isn't even on a paint chart!!
• Some of the test pots I bought were half empty and had obviously been already used. They were nonetheless sold at full price. But it's not worth driving across town to complain about a $4 test pot!

Above: a test pot of "Licorice" I bought at full price, but it was half empty (and with paint around the screw top) when I got it home.

In total I bought approx. 17 test pots to choose 2 colours. Thankfully I'd been coupon-clipping for a while (look on the back of supermarket till receipts for "Buy 2 get 1 free" test pot offers from Resene), so that helped the finances a bit.

Above: test pot madness! All this to choose 2 colours ;)

I guess if I didn't care so much about the colour, or if I were better at choosing colours, the exercise would have been a lot simpler. But both Mr Kiwi and I are quite specific about what we like, hence the prolonged exercise!

Oh, and I downloaded the 2 (free) Resene iPhone apps during the process too. Save yourself the time, they're not very helpful. One didn't even work and just gave me error messages!

My favourite Resene store: Wairau Park. The friendly staff there helped us choose both the colours for our villa.

Other Resene stores worthy of a mention: Birkenhead, for being the only store to suggest I get a Free Resene Card (which gives you discounts and other goodies). And Ponsonby, for being the only stores to have the free "Create Your Own Colour Scheme" Sheets with a villa on them.

Least favourite Resene store: Takapuna - the young guy there just didn't want to know or didn't want to help. (He was so rude/abrupt to the guy in front of me it was embarrassing just being in the store!)