The saga of the Navy Blue paint seems to have more episodes and drama than the Twilight Saga so despite finally choosing a colour the universe conspired to throw a spanner in the works and Fountains Blue was not to be.

I had to order the Fired Earth Fountains Blue paint since the store did not stock this colour and when I went to collect it something did not sound right, the paint seemed very watery I could hear it sloshing all the way to the car.  On to the room to be painted, lift off the lid and we were greeted with this

Dry sample to the right, wet sample on the bottom, mystery paint on top

Even though the dark sample above is wet the colour which is practically black did not change when it was dry it also developed a really oily residue, not a good look on a matt paint, clearly something had gone wrong and to top off it off we were now on a bit of a time crunch as we needed to get two coats on the walls before the carpet arrived, re-ordering was not option.
Farrow & Ball to the rescue!  Armed with sample pots of Drawing Room Blue and Hague Blue it was back to the nest to re-chose my problem blue. In the end there was a winner in Hague Blue, we did encounter a few more hiccups on the way but we made the deadline and today the carpet went down on time. Farrow & Ball were a tremendous help and I'm incredibly happy with the end result just going to show you things really do happen for a reason.

Farrow & Ball Hague Blue (sorry for the dust)

Walls - Check, Carpet - Check, Wardrobes - Next

So it turns out I'm the Goldilocks of paint, the previous sample pots I mentioned (here) weren't quite right, Sapphire Springs was very close and a really lovely blue but not quite as dark as I wanted it. However the good news is that I have actually found a paint, I know amazing right.

So the paint in question? Fired Earth's Fountains Blue

It took an extra 3 samples to get here

Described as:

A strong blue but at the same time, quiet and tranquil, like the ruins of Fountains Abbey in the twilight.

Fountains Blue definitely has a purple base colour, in fact it looked so purple when I first painted the sample I dismissed it. However once it dried it darkened down and more of the bluey tones came out.  It's not the same as Midnight, it's definitely more purple but it does have that dark night sky look I was looking for. 

I have a small addiction to deep, dark blue walls I fell in love with the colour and I just knew I had to have it for my dressing room, so off I went on a quest to find the perfect blue. As always there is a catch and that is that the perfect navy blue is REALLY hard to find.

Six sample pots later I found the perfect blue by the name of Midnight by Homebase Sanctuary, it's perfect and as I discovered today it's also discontinued.


So with this news off to Homebase I went armed with my large painted sample to see if Dulux they can colour match, sadly the colour machine could not match my gorgeous Midnight shade but by comparing the colour cards I think I have a couple of candidates for my new perfect navy.



Hopefully when I test these new colours one of them will be just what I'm looking but failing that my close second was a colour by Crown from the Period dead flat matt collection by the name of Ballgown, which also happens to have the perfect name.


 I'll be sure to update on my colour quest after trying out my new samples.