The other day we stopped by Home Depot to check out the new Martha Stewart Living Paint collection and, unsurprisingly, were impressed by Martha’s consistently thoughtful color choices.
What caught us by surprise was the attention paid to the reverse side of the paint chips. Martha’s chips include a number of practical extras designed to help homeowners make the most of each color. That made us curious about other brands that add value to their sample chips. But first, a closer look at the line that sparked our interest:
One standout feature of the Martha chips is suggested coordinating colors for the ceiling (listed at the top of the chip) and the trim or woodwork (shown at the bottom). Each suggested swatch can be folded over to view it next to the main color. It’s a simple, elegant way to encourage thinking beyond the wall—without those prompts, you might never consider pairing a River Mist (a slate blue) trim with a Bakery Box White (a milky wall color).
If you’re repainting an entire house, the Martha chips also include small icons in the corners to help you assemble a cohesive color scheme that transitions smoothly from room to room—just match icons to create harmonious combinations.
The chips even provide space to note which color was used in each room, which is a handy organizational touch for anyone who wants to keep track of paint locations and formulations.
Beyond Martha Stewart Living, other brands also offer useful chip features. Glidden, another Home Depot brand, relaunched with chips that include coordinating color suggestions on the back and an inspiration photo to help you visualize how the palette works together. While Glidden trimmed some shades from their line, many of those colors remain available if you ask for them by name at the paint desk.
Behr, Home Depot’s primary in-house brand, is more restrained in chip-level guidance but still offers practical features. Their cards include a perforated hole so you can assemble a custom fan deck of your favorite swatches—the ring is even provided. This makes comparing and carrying multiple samples much easier when planning a project.
At Lowe’s, the main brands Olympic and Valspar offer fewer chip extras, but Valspar’s chips do include pre-cut squares that help you see how two colors look side-by-side or compare a swatch directly to a pillow or fabric. We’ve used that feature to match an existing paint color in a sunroom; the touch-ups blended so well they were virtually undetectable.
We didn’t visit specialty retailers like Sherwin-Williams or Benjamin Moore on this trip, but our home fan decks from those brands lack many of the chip extras described above. That said, both companies produce excellent booklets and pamphlets full of inspiring ideas and curated schemes that can be very useful when planning a project.
In the end, extra features on paint chips are a welcome bonus rather than a necessity. While we wouldn’t judge a paint brand solely on how elaborate its chips are, it’s nice when manufacturers go the extra mile to provide inspiration, organization, and practical coordination tools.
Have you encountered any especially helpful extras on paint chips, websites, or in-store displays? Have you used any of the features described above to choose paint colors? We noticed a Glidden delivery driver stocking chips who quietly called the new Martha line “second to none,” which felt like a notable compliment coming from someone working for the competition.