Mixing paint

Mixing paint

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• 9.13.2010

I've mentioned that we just moved to a new house, and are working on painting and decorating all over the place.  I've spent enough money on paint already, and ended up with a couple colors that I'm not happy with, so I decided to do some mixing.  I have a friend who has even more extra paint than we do, and generously offered a paint-mixing party so we could see what we could come up with together.

I had never done this before (take two or more gallons of paint, combine A with B and get a blended color), and somehow it seemed much more intimidating than necessary!  Seems simple enough, I guess--just mix the colors!, but I dunno, I guess I'm worried about matte vs. satin vs. eggshell finishes, and the paint not being stirred enough, or whatever.  Have any of you ever attempted this?

We started by separating the paints by finish, but eventually just mixed satin enamel with eggshell enamel and matte, or whatever, and hopefully it'll work out.  We had a lot of fun with lots of color combinations!  But it's funny, despite the 10 or so paints we had, we got mostly blues and greens that began to look pretty similar after a while.

I was indecisive about the color I wanted, but I want to find a color for the bathroom that I like.  The house was built in 1928, so I want something kind of vintage-ey, but also contemporary enough that I can put IKEA fixtures and things in.  I was open to blue, green, aqua, or pink.  It's hard to find a pretty color that doesn't look too old-fashioned, though... I had fun looking at historic and vintage bathrooms on this fun site, Antique Home Style, which has galleries of ads and other pictures from homes 1900-1960s.  Check out some of the bathrooms from the '20s... some of them are very cool, and some are just funny!  A lot of strong colors, though, not the pastels like a lot of today's bathrooms.
I like the general color we came up with, but I think I want it about four shades lighter, unfortunately.  I'm afraid it will be too strong in the bathroom!  Although there is a lot of white in there, also.  Here's the color, and below it, the color mixed with a little (not enough?) white in a smaller patch.

What do you think?  How much white do I need to add before it's usable?  Or, does the bold color work for a house with a bit of historic, a bit of modern design?  Some of those 20's bathrooms have super saturated colors.  I'd love your thoughts!