Beige Is Back: Sherwin-Williams’ Color Expert on Paint Colors, Trends & Winning Jobs w/ Sue Wadden

Jon Bryant: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Price Sell Paint podcast. I am Jon Bryant here today with Sue Wadden and Michael Murray isn't able to join us, too bad because he's missing out on an awesome conversation here with Sue. Sue, I want to introduce you to everybody. Obviously, we know each other, but for those who don't know Sue, Sue is kind of referred to as the Oracle. If you ever seen the Matrix, it's that person you meet behind the scenes that actually names all the paint. And Sue's got 25 years experience doing this, leading the color strategy at Sherwin-Williams which I'm very impressed by. I have a lot of color questions for you. And you've also got a podcast called Color Mixology with Sherwin-Williams. And you just have a ton of experience in this space. You've been on a lot of different media channels, Architectural Digest, Forbes, Wall Street Journal. And I'm just so happy to have you, to chat with you today. So thank you.

Sue Wadden: Yeah, well, thank you for the invite. It is, obviously we get to talk offline a lot, but it's nice to be together here talking about all these things that I know and can maybe help your audience with a little bit, hopefully.

Jon Bryant: I would love to help some people today. So that's my goal. And like I said before the podcast, if you're listening today and you're looking to get some help on how to talk to customers about color, how to use that to your advantage and the process, this is going to be a great podcast because I know that we can answer some questions for people that are about how to control that conversation and make it better. Cause I think it's scary for a lot of people in our industry and something a lot of contractors I know move away from because they get scared and it's not a comfortable conversation. So is that what you've experienced too in your time?

Sue Wadden: For sure. I look at our audiences like a three-legged stool. So first and foremost, near to my heart are designers. And designers, they're pretty confident in color. So we don't often have those color conversations. But for homeowners and pros, fear is a huge driver of satisfaction or dissatisfaction on a job. So a homeowner, they don't want to make the wrong decision. It's an expense whether somebody is painting for them or they're doing it themselves. And pros, they don't want to be responsible for a bad decision. And that just causes a lot of, I guess I can't do this. I'm not equipped to this. But the truth of the matter is there are a lot of tools available to take that pain away. So I think that's really my goal in talking to you today is to be like, here's some resources. Here's why we do this and put this out into the universe to help. So that's a big part of it. The decision can be made. Pros can talk about color, but phone a friend. There are so many resources out there to help.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I think that's one thing, getting into the industry years and years ago, I didn't really realize is that there were these resources available for free that would benefit the customers and my ability to sell paint jobs. So I'm excited to get into all that stuff today, Sue, but before we do, how'd you get into this and how have you held your job for 25 years? I feel like that's a job people really want.

Sue Wadden: Well, it's crazy. I like to affectionately say I tripped over this job, kind of. I was in art school. I was pursuing an interior design degree. Like you do when you're in college, you need internships. So I had worked at an exhibit design company one summer. I worked at a retail design firm one summer. That was great. And my final summer before I graduated, I got this job at Sherwin-Williams doing color marketing and design. And I was like, I don't even know what that is. What is that? And so very quickly found that this was the perfect balance of design and business, which I loved. That really worked for me. And I graduated on Friday and started full time on Monday at Sherwin-Williams. And this has been the job that I've had for my whole career doing different things, of course. But it's an awesome company, an amazing product. And I really believe in what I do. And I have such a unicorn job in this field that it's great.

Jon Bryant: When you first started it, was someone else naming the color or just paint had no color names?

Sue Wadden: No, no, no. I mean, this is, we're a 160 year old company. And so as far back as I can find, there were color names. In the post Victorian era, there were definitely color names. Maybe they didn't have 1500 colors in a color palette. But there was this idea that color marketing was important, that people have such an emotional connection to color. Naming that color is really helpful versus just a color code, just a numeric convention. That's almost clinical, the way to look at color and color is so emotional. I mean, we could spend a whole podcast episode talking about that. So that was really clear to me, but the woman that hired me and her name was Linda Trent, she at the time had developed our brand new system that was 1998 when I started. And so it was fun to see how color is developed and what is color marketing. And it's really it's art and science coming together. So it's not just chemistry. It's not just product quality. It's really taking pigment putting it in a bunch of chemistry and seeing what comes out, and then inspiring people to put that up on their walls. So that's really the marketing side of it. And that's really where it gets fun. But developing a color system is serious business. What are the needs of the industry? What can the technology get you at the time? So ColorSnap is our current system. Do you want to hear about this? This is interesting to me.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely, yeah, keep going.

Sue Wadden: So in 2000, technology, okay, let me take a step back. When I started, Color Answers was our system and it was a two-component system. It had an exterior color deck and an interior color deck. And the interior color deck, I don't know, was like 600 colors maybe. They were kind of brighter, cleaner, more interior type colors. And the exterior palette was sort of dirtier, more neutral, earth-driven kind of colors. And our pros loved them because they coated and covered with awesome application, but they were just kind of darker, deeper, less saturation. A lot of people would say they were too dirty. And then technology change and innovation change in pigments that in 2000, we were able to offer a brighter, cleaner color system. Much less undertones of gray and muddier tones, much cleaner, much brighter. We were like, this is going to be it. You can coat a jewel toned paint color like green in one coat because the technology is so good. And then very quickly, we were all excited about it. We launched this new system and we realized that you have to have both because we got a lot of reaction that people didn't want those brighter, cleaner colors. Just because the technology was available at the time, it didn't mean that that's what consumers wanted to buy. So then we added additional palettes to pull in the greatest hits of what was done, those other older colors. And I learned very quickly, you have to cover all your bases when you offer a system. It can't just be one thing. It has to offer the full gamut, which is a challenge.

Jon Bryant: So a color system, there's a lot of technology behind the manufacturing of the paint. So that gives you the options, like you're saying, to coat in different colors. When you go out to create a system, are you starting with the colors themselves or are you starting with feelings or where do you start?

Sue Wadden: I tend to start visual, just because I'm an artist, designer by background. So I start with visual cues. I would, if you can visualize this, I would take a fan deck, deconstruct it, pull all the parts, lay it out on a huge table, and then start to say, I think that there's a visual gap between this and this. So maybe we need to add a row of color here, or maybe from this blue to this blue, we're missing some color space. So first, it's a visual identification. Now technology is so great that you can do that digitally. So I could feed all our color data into a software and say, help me find the gaps in our palette. Where does our color space live? And you get a three dimensional view, like a spherical view of color of our color space. And then I could be like, well, listen, if we do a little more of this next time, we can fill that gap. But the tension is does it matter? Do people care about those colors? So we can offer really bright, clean colors. And if nobody's going to buy it, there's no point in that. So that's where the art and the science come together. And then you make a recommendation, which is interesting. Fun. I think that's fun.

Jon Bryant: So how do you figure out if people are gonna buy it? I've always been curious about that.

Sue Wadden: So that's where trend forecasting comes in. So that's a big part of my team's job is that we have to go and track what's out there. So for instance, we've been talking about neutrals warming up since post-COVID. Earth tones were really emerging. Blues and greens are super important. And we talk about that in trend terms. So in 24 months, you're going to start to see this color and get grays out of your palette because this is really going to be about beige and warmer whites and all those things. And then slowly we start beating that drum and over time the trend starts to materialize. I can tell you, we've been saying grays are out since 2020 and now finally it is at consumer level and they're not buying grays. Grays are down almost 35% in popularity from what is being tinted. So we do the forecasting and then we do the validation to make sure those stories line up and really are resonating. One thing that we couldn't have predicted was COVID and the response to earth tones, which I think is interesting. So blues and greens in 2020, Naval was our color of year in 2020, which is a beautiful Navy. We knew that that was going to be a rising color, but we just didn't know how much green was going to take over because of COVID. So people were like, I'm stuck inside. I'm going to bring the outside in. I want to put houseplants in my house and I want to feel inspired by nature. I love green. And then green now has overtaken every other color family in importance for the last six years. So that's what's so great about this job is that you get to put your Oracle hat on and help people with that guidance so that when they go to their favorite store and they want to buy a rug, they know the colors that they're going to see. That's the cool part of the job.

Jon Bryant: How much of that is, and this is a fascination of mine just in general with fashion, with trends, how much of that is alignment that you have with other things you're seeing and kind of a holistic thing? Do you see it in fashion and then you say, okay, that might work in paint or how does that actually work?

Sue Wadden: I get this question all the time and I would say that because I'm a designer and my team, we all have design backgrounds, that we solve problems and see patterns. Designers can see patterns. So I know immediately when something's new. For instance, this is an example. I have started to see metallic silver peeking its way back in. So I read a report a month ago from Milan and it had all this shiny silver metallic furniture in it. And I was like, that's new, I have not seen that. And then I went to go buy a travel bag this morning and there was a silver metallic bag and I was like, what is that? And then my daughter who is 20, totally obviously a consumer of things that are cool, we had dinner last night and she had this silver metallic nail polish on. So I'm like, well, this is something I need to pay attention to from these outlets. So we're not talking about it in home decor in the United States yet, but this is something that's coming because these little signals are out there in the world. And people like me, that's our job to pick up on those cues and then say, for next year's trend report, I'll be like, hey, everybody, we got to talk about this color. And this is maybe going to find its way into hardware for doors in the next two years. So that's the puzzle part of this job that's really, really interesting and also a challenge. You don't want to get it wrong because these are big indicators.

Jon Bryant: It's funny when you talk about the way you see the world, because I think you talk to a painting contractor and they go into a friend's house and they're like, bad paint job. And you probably go around the world being like, you are so out of date.

Sue Wadden: Not even that, what I would say is we were, we went to a job site, I was in Nashville this week and we went to these beautiful new projects. There's a lot of construction in Nashville and there was a lot of oak like yellow oak, white oak. And I could say that five years ago everyone was like, more oak. And now it's really reemerged with biophilic design and all these principles. And so now people are like, I want to keep my oak cabinets. You might not want to. Maybe change the hardware. Maybe do a new finish, but keep it. So that's because I've been doing this job like an old shoe for a long time. So you see things come and go.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, it's so interesting though. I think this idea of getting ahead of it is fascinating. I've read a little bit about this concept in design for fashion and people try and identify, Doc Martens coming back into style and where do you actually look? Where are the hotspots of design that are going to start taking over? I think it's such a fascinating societal, psychological type thing where it starts somewhere.

Sue Wadden: It starts somewhere. There's something. Here's something, you're younger than me, but I think you could pick up on it. So in 2016, the iPhone came out with a champagne gold iPhone, and it was really pink. Do you remember that phone? It was a big change. It was not black, it was not gray or silver metallic. It was pinky gold. And that caused a tidal wave, which ultimately became millennial pink. And then as we approached 2018, 2019, that color became part of the lexicon of design, those pinky, beigey tones, which told forecasters, we're not gonna see gray anymore, we're gonna see this warming up. And then we hit COVID, it's all about nature, and then it's earth tones, browns. Brown is on the rise, brown is a super important color and will continue to be because of these socioeconomic global factors that impact color, it's nuts. But here's the thing, people are going to be shutting off this podcast, they're going to get stressed out. I would never suggest that painting contractors should become color forecasters. Your job is to make sure that level five finish looks fantastic. But that's the point, that's why companies like Sherwin invest in people like me so that we can help everybody. We can get that information out in a way that's usable so that you guys can help your customers.

Jon Bryant: Totally. Yeah, let's, I have one more question about color than I want to transition to helping contractors. So the color piece, I'm a marketer at heart. I love marketing and I'm curious to know, you mentioned this before, even back in the Victorian era, there were colors with names and it wasn't just red, green, blue. Why do you think that matters? Does it actually influence sales? Does it actually change someone's perspective? What is it?

Sue Wadden: I think sometimes it can influence sales, though I would, as a design purist, I would be like, no, if you love the color, you love it because it's the right color. But for a consumer, if they walk and they're shopping color and there's the paradox of choice, you have everything. How do you narrow down your selection? So if you're deciding between, we'll go back to pink, two pinks, ballet slipper pink and dead salmon, which is a competitor's color, which I think is a hysterical name.

Jon Bryant: It's hilarious.

Sue Wadden: But it's dead flat. It's a British company that everybody knows that's a fancy paint. For them, in that cultural association, it means flat salmon. But here in the States, that's dead animal color. Yeah, so those cultural associations matter when it comes to naming a paint color. And I think most people probably would be like, I'm going to go ballet slipper pink, because that feels a little more safer. Names do matter, words matter. And especially when it comes to marketing a paint. Now I still would say I'm a purist. If it's the right color, you should bring the right color in. It's not like we're naming our walls for when our company comes over. People are like, this looks beautiful. I love this color. What is this? Oh, it's Shoji white. Isn't it a gorgeous white? So take them.

Jon Bryant: There is a bit of that though. And I think it's a good segue into contractor, how we speak to customers as contractors. And that's that, I feel in my experiences, I mean, showing this to be correct for me, maybe you disagree, but it's that color is the whole reason customers are doing this stuff. Essentially I've always thought we just apply color glue to walls. And if it protects great, that's a great secondary feature. But I'm just looking to refresh, reinvigorate, whatever those words are. And so color is so important in the process. And I think it's something that as contractors we lean away from. I think you've probably done a bunch of thinking about this and I'd like to know what advice you give contractors as they start talking about the fact that this is the reason their customer's doing it and what they should be doing.

Sue Wadden: So a lot of times there's trigger moments. I know this, I'm a mom, I have two kids, I've been raising my kids along the way with my career doing this thing. There's moments, like when babies are born, there's nurseries, when they go to elementary school, they're big kids now, they want to change. When you move to a new home, when you're an empty nester, I'm recently an empty nester. There are trigger moments why people want to change or freshen up their space. So it's a great opportunity to, from a marketing perspective with pros, remind people of these moments. August is a perfect time for a trigger moment for repainting. People are sending their kids back to school and they're trying to prep before the holidays. And if you start thinking about painting in November, here in the U.S. we have Thanksgiving. Canada is October. Is that right?

Jon Bryant: Canada is July, but Thanksgiving is in October. Yes.

Sue Wadden: So you don't want to take apart your dining room in October or November to get ready for a holiday. You want to do that in August. So those moments, even though it seems silly, those are great times to start talking to people about repainting. Everyone knows you're preparing your house to sell, you want to repaint it. And I think at that point, the color conversation is off the table. Or contractors get notified, they're going to bid a job, you go into someone's home. What do you like? How do you help people solve that problem? White is our top selling paint color for 160 years for a reason. When people don't know what to do, they default to white. This dining room that you're sitting in, it was a deep evergreen and I just needed a palette cleanse. So I just painted it this color and I'm sure in six months I'll be painting it something else. I needed to kind of make a change, but those moments I think a good pro shouldn't run away from and just say, I don't know, I don't pick color, you should figure it out on your own. I think as a professional people look to their pros for guidance. Undertone, light levels, your region, what's going to cover. Maybe I want the brightest, cleanest white possible. But at a certain light reflectance value, you're not going to get good coverage. So maybe it's going to require a couple coats. Maybe people don't want to pay for that. There's just so much knowledge that a pro has that I think, don't be afraid to share that knowledge with a homeowner. Does that make sense?

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. I mean, do you think it plays into winning more jobs? If you do it.

Sue Wadden: I think so. I think so. If I'm going to hire a pro, I'm going to want to partner with somebody that gives me their expert insight, gives me great recommendations versus somebody that's like, I don't know, lady, what do you want? Of course, you want value. There is value associated with that expertise.

Jon Bryant: For sure. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. The discussion often is as a pro, I think people think people want to know about painting. It's like, let me tell you about all the things I know about painting. But once you flip the switch and have painting done for you, you realize that actually your pain points are a lot different than what the pro thinks. And so when you don't think about color as a main driver for the decision, you're leaving yourself at a major disadvantage and you can tell them all about the specs of the paint, the names of the paint, the sheen of the paint. And the customer is going to be like, I don't know about any of this stuff. Sure. Whatever. But whatever you think, yeah, you tell me. And then they're like, let's talk about my problems, which are color. And you're like, I don't know anything. Like, wait a second. So I've always felt like that puts people at a major disadvantage in that sales process. So I'm glad we agree on that.

Sue Wadden: Yes. Yeah. But there's also ways, I said it earlier, phone a friend. You don't have to be making those decisions on color. Use the professionals that are out there that are putting stuff out there. So having pros understand that Sherwin-Williams invests in all this color information is a first step. So we need you guys to believe that we know what we're talking about. And I think we're pretty good at this. And then we publish all those resources to help. So that's a big part of it too.

Jon Bryant: So let's talk about that. There's all these resources, top three that you feel like every contractor should know from Sherwin-Williams.

Sue Wadden: So definitely our website is an awesome tool or our app. I was going to pull it up. We launched a new app. You can't really see it. It's called color expert and it's available obviously in the Apple store, I think for Samsung too, for all devices. And it's an awesome color. It's super easy. So it was developed for homeowners to help navigate the color selection process, but it also has our popular colors, our top picks by color family. Anytime we launch a trend palette or color of the year, it's all archived on the app. So it's awesome. If I were a pro, I would be like, this would be part of my pre-call planning to bid a job. So I would say, hey, homeowner, Sherwin-Williams has this great tool, download it, play around with color, see what you like, make a little palette, and then we can talk about it when I come to bid the job. It's a really, really good resource and homeowners can order color chips through the app and they're free and they'll show up in a couple of days. So that whole play phase of color a homeowner can do before you even show up to get a job, which I think is really, really helpful.

Jon Bryant: Cool. I love that you're doing that beforehand. That really sets the tone for what's happening. So that's a new thought process for me. I love that.

Sue Wadden: Completely, yeah. Yeah, so get them, trust me, they're already on Pinterest, they're already playing around, they're already going into stores, they're grabbing swatches for the most part, I think. People have an idea about color. Helping them narrow that funnel down from everything to the couple, six or seven hues that they really like is really important and the app can help with that. And then I would say the second thing, and the same thing with our website, so sherwinnwilliams.com has all those resources, it's just obviously on desktop. So if you like going on desktop and on an app, it's all right there too. And then it's important to get a sample in hand. So if people are playing around in the digital space, they're narrowing things down, whether they order their own samples or you get them for them, get samples in hand so people can spend some time putting a chip on a wall, looking at it in different times of day, different lighting sources. That's really helpful to help people understand, this beige might have a little pink undertone. This one's a little more brown undertone or gray. You're going to be really happy here. That helps again, take it from this money to this money. So that's another thing. So whether you drive people to the store or you order chips online, we have peel and sticks. Have you seen those? They're eight by eight. Those are great resources. Sometimes I've talked to pros. They keep a trunk stock of those, their favorite colors in their trunk to just give to homeowners to play around with. So that's also an option, a little bit of an investment upfront, but I think long-term it's really beneficial.

Jon Bryant: Totally. Yeah, positions yourself differently in the eye of the customer, I think, as someone who actually helped with the problem. Is there, yeah, go for the third one. Thank you, sorry, we're at two.

Sue Wadden: Wait, I got one more. I got a third one. So our third one, another, so there's people that don't know anything about what they want. They need help narrowing. There's also homeowners that are like, I want to match my couch or rug or curio cabinet or this picture. We have a tool called Colorsnap Match. I think we're naming it to SureMatch. We just have a new tool that's coming out and it'll be available I think by January. It's going to do custom formulas. So it won't just match to the closest Sherwin-Williams color. It'll do that. But it'll also say, hey, I painted this exterior 17 years ago, and I want the same color. Can you match it? You'll be able to match that color, and then it'll send a custom formula to the store. So that you can, and that's brand new for us. That's going to be excellent, excellent, excellent technology. So you can do sheen and color matches.

Jon Bryant: So helpful. And is that a piece of hardware that you're carrying around?

Sue Wadden: Yeah, I'm so sorry I don't have one with me. The prototype's at the office. Yeah, it's a little device. So it's a little color eye, like a reader. And you just put it on whatever surface. It can be vertical, horizontal. And then it'll read through an app. So it'll give you a recommendation. So you could say, match the closest to Sherwin-Williams color, or I need this custom match.

Jon Bryant: Amazing. It's crazy how far that stuff has come. I remember using the first stuff and it was like, I put it up on the wall and it's like, this is white. I'm like, yeah, of course. This is blue. And I didn't see how it would get better. And now I've seen the new stuff. I'm like, wow, this is actually really, really helpful and good.

Sue Wadden: It's really helpful and cool. And we test them all the time. We have secret testings. Is it really that good? And it's really that good. So people should know that. I'm excited about this one.

Jon Bryant: That's awesome. So helpful. So one of the questions I have with all of this stuff is you're a contractor, you're a pro, you're going out and talking with your customers and you can give them all these resources. Is there a way for the pro to get educated on a little bit of this stuff? How do you recommend that?

Sue Wadden: So I would say, again, just play around with our app. I do love our app because it's so easy. So on there, it'll say expert picks. Those are my colors. So by color family. And I give you information on top reds, blues, greens. There's just the things that I know are excellent, excellent colors. Our top 50 colors, we publish those every year based on our analysis and tracking. So get familiar with those. You can find top trim colors, top cabinet colors, top whites, top blues. All that information is ready to go. So even if you just want to have 10 colors to offer a homeowner, it at least can be the insights that you can share in real time as you're bidding a job. Certainly pros, I love this. I find this fascinating that pros love our color trend forecast. So it's developed for designers, but we get a lot of pros interested in that conversation because they want to know directionally what's coming. So for instance, color drenching. Do you know what that term is?

Jon Bryant: I do, but I'll let you explain it Sue.

Sue Wadden: So picture a room, the ceiling, the crown molding, the walls, the trim are all one color. They're the same color. So maybe it's urbane bronze, we'll go with that. That's where it's called color drenching. So it's really a designer movement that homeowners love. So you look at, maybe my living room would be color drenched. It would have that color all the way through. And it's beautiful. But again, if pros weren't paying attention to trends and a homeowner said, can you paint every single surface in my living room burgundy, they'd be like, are you crazy? But recognizing that that's kind of a movement in design is important because then a pro can show up and be like, I do that all the time. I just did that at Mrs. Havisham's house and it looked great and I'm your guy or I'm your person. So I think staying on top of the trends is really helpful. You don't have to be an expert, but have some awareness.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. That's amazing. So in that discussion with customers, you go from handing over some stuff, like here's some swatches, take a look, you do your thing. Is there anything you recommend to help them guide the conversation? Like is that that section of, here's some top picks, maybe take a look at those or what colors your couch, you want to match that. Is there anything else that you think is helpful there?

Sue Wadden: Just a general understanding. Regionality is really important. So if I am in Arizona and a homeowner says, I want to paint my exterior black, that's where the experience of the painter probably comes in to say, you know what, it's really sunny here. And as good as this paint is, you're going to have some fade issues over time. Maybe you want to go with a brown that's a little less saturated. So I think that's where the feet on the street experience of painting contractors really comes in handy. For instance, Northern exposure, the light is just kind of dimmer and not as bright as Southern exposure. Maybe a homeowner, if they want to go with a black, they're not going to be as happy because that room is going to look really dark. So again, those are, that's a little more nuanced than maybe most people do. But I think some understanding of basic principles of color specification helps. We've got, I think we've got some training for pros, like how to talk color, like color 101. Resources like that can be super helpful. Just a basic knowledge. You don't have to quit your day job and go into color specification, but generally it helps.

Jon Bryant: So you paint the room a darker color, the room looks smaller. Yeah, so it recedes. You paint the ceiling darker, makes it feel lower. Yeah, so stuff like that has been really helpful over the years in talking with customers of ours, just about how this is going to impact their life. Because I think the color drenching thing has been interesting because sometimes we've done it and they're like, the room feels so tiny now. Yeah, because everything's now a dark blue. Exactly. Yeah. So that kind of stuff, sometimes you live and you learn. And I always wish that I learned more earlier on so I don't have to learn so much as I lived. Yeah, so that's really helpful. So color education 101, that's just on the Sherwin-Williams website, is that right? Yeah, for pros.

Sue Wadden: Yep, yep. Yes. I mean, if your audiences, they use AI yet. There's some great ways to just search some generalized color information, tools and tricks, you know, search that way. But we certainly have all those resources on Sherwin.com. In fact, we have a contractor page on, it's called Pro Color Tools. And again, we can put these in your show notes. That's awesome. And all these tools are on one landing page. So you can see all the resources available to help. Again, phone a friend. You don't have to make these decisions on your own.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. And like I said earlier, I mean, it took me way too long to learn about this stuff. And so don't be me if you're listening, go and check this out today and be proactive about it because truly this is the reason we're in business. I think as pros, I mean, there's obviously some other nuances to it, but color, when you, what'd you say? 1500 colors. So what's in the Sherwin-Williams palette? It's 1700 and growing.

Sue Wadden: Yeah, yeah. 1794 to be exact, but yes.

Jon Bryant: That's a lot of colors. I also wanted to ask today just about decision fatigue because I think it's a big part of the homeowner experience. I know they want to do it. They got to narrow it down. And I think a lot of people get paralyzed by that decision. So how as pros can we guide them into helping them feel comfortable? I know you mentioned the swatches on the wall, phone a friend. Is there anything else you'd offer there?

Sue Wadden: They do. Sometimes it sounds very 1995, but flipping through magazines, finding style and aesthetic, going on Pinterest, searching around a little bit in that pre-phase helps people like, I love that chocolatey brown. I can see that in my kitchen. I saw it in Pottery Barn or I've seen that places that that can help reassure. And again, if you're not working with an interior designer, a homeowner is trying to make these decisions on their own, help them with some resources, our social. We put content out all the time with room shots and different colors up on walls to help people again, make those choices. So that's also a recommendation as well.

Jon Bryant: Cool. One other thing that I've heard in that conversation so many times is, well, actually experience as well. We've had customers go, they love a color online and they pick it and we apply it. And then they're like, hey, this color wasn't what it showed online. And that's probably never happened to you, right? So that's only my problem. I get that happens a lot. So what do you recommend in that process to, there's the decision fatigue or process analysis, whatever you want to call it. But there's also the question of, what if I don't like it?

Sue Wadden: Color chip in hand. Number one. So if somebody had said to me, I love this color. I think this is a digital interpretation. I would have a look at it and then give them five more options that I feel were close. Maybe a little lighter, maybe a little darker, maybe a little this. Because it's so different on screen. So LED lighting, blue light that comes through a screen in digital, it changes color so much. So having a physical color chip in hand is really, really the best defense from people making a bad choice or a wet sample if people want to see a wet sample painted out.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, that's been, I think the most fail safe approach is actually getting a wet sample on the wall or on the surface, whatever it's going to be. The chips, I mean, are they pretty standardized these days? They're good, because I know there used to be a problem in the past.

Sue Wadden: Yeah, I mean, it's paint on paper. So our peel and sticks are actual paint on paper, which is great. The company we work with has this curing process that's super slick. And so that is a perfect delta. But even our color chips, it is a lacquer, so it mimics paint. But we read those, and the delta difference from formula to that color is nobody but a computer could probably see the difference. If there even is one, it's really, I mean, that's how I choose color. If I'm doing it, people should feel pretty good about it. Sometimes there's instances where people want to see percentages of colors. So maybe they want charcoal, but the one that we have in our color chip library is too dark. They want it 10% lighter. That's a custom formula. That can also be appropriate, but at the store level, they would have to make that formula and then do a drawdown, mix it up, tint it, make a custom color chip, color drawdown, and then that's what people take home to make the decision. So obviously that's not the easiest thing to do. That's a couple more steps. So we usually think people hopefully like our colors and go with something that we have available.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I love it. There was at one point in my life where we did a paint job for somebody and then they said it was only 95% accurate to the color. And it was the craziest moment in my life where I was like, I don't even know what to tell you. Is that a thing? I mean, when someone's like, is 95%, we bring in a rep and they're like, couldn't tell you. And the person's like, I'm not paying my bill. You're like, wow, what is this?

Sue Wadden: I know, it's horribly frustrating. So I really do think this new tool, this SureMatch that we're going to launch will help with that. So if somebody says, I want this color, I don't believe that this chip is right, you can do a custom match formula and that will be exactly what they see. And so I feel like that will help with that horrible, horrible situation. It's the worst.

Jon Bryant: Who says that? It's just a lot. I mean, that was only one and done for me, but we just gave the person 500 bucks off and we're like, please never call us again. This is crazy.

Sue Wadden: Exactly. I mean, we don't want that. Nobody wants that. Manufacturers don't want that. Obviously, painting contractors don't want that. That's not a good customer experience. So hopefully we want them happy before they even start rolling.

Jon Bryant: And most people are, and some people will never be. So it's tough.

Sue Wadden: Yes, right. This is why pros are part therapists. That's also a big part of the role, which I never would have thought about, but it's 100%. I like this color. My husband doesn't like this. What do I do?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, color therapy.

Sue Wadden: For sure, for sure. And that's a big responsibility. That's why, yeah, phone a friend, phone a friend. Take the pressure off. Sherwin-Williams says, pick this color.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, there's, I've heard it said before that if you pick the right color, you're helping people save their relationship, which is wild. It is. Yeah. I never signed up for that. Love it. Yeah. So helpful. At the start of this, you mentioned a little bit about marketing. So I mean, this is helpful for, I mean, love those moments, when moments matter and that's happening all the way through our society. So there's a way to market to that. What would you say to someone who's trying to do social media around this stuff, trying to market using color? Is there strategies you've seen that really work too?

Sue Wadden: I just think people consume color content like crazy. So we see that on our channels. I can send out an email with six different modules of something and the one that performs the best is the color content because people just naturally want to see it. Good, better and different. They may hate a color. They may love it. So I would say if you've got gorgeous rooms, ask the homeowner if you can snap a picture and post it on your channels. There is no better validation for new customers than seeing color up on walls or application on walls. I think that's very, very powerful. So I would encourage people to do that.

Jon Bryant: Very cool. And I also love when you said, you do things before you actually meet with your prospective clients. Show them that you care about this stuff. Use this as an opportunity to speak their language. I think the pre-sale stuff is just as valuable as any marketing piece you can say. So I'd add that.

Sue Wadden: Yeah, definitely. And there are circumstances where you're just not going to get a color message across. You need help. You can't call Sue Wadden because I couldn't do that. That'd be too hard. But we have a virtual consultation process. So we have professionals on staff where they can set up time with homeowners and help with a professional consultation. So sometimes it just gets to that point where the digital is not enough, the sample conversation is not enough. People just really want to be hand-held a little bit more to make the decision. So that's always an option too, which again, all those resources are available on how to connect with our color tools, the app, everything.

Jon Bryant: Love it. Love it, Sue. One last question. I know everyone listening is curious to know, but when is beige coming back?

Sue Wadden: Beige is back bro. I mean for sure. Yes. For sure. It is. And it's not builder beige from the two thousands. It's not that nutty warm mid tone. It's a much more sophisticated mushroom undertone, a little taupe. We're seeing khaki come back in a big way, which we haven't seen khaki in a long time. So yes, again, that warmth, just forget about gray. Just take that out of your, take that out of your conversation.

Jon Bryant: Okay, gray's gone. Okay. Love it. Sue, thank you for coming on. That's always a pleasure to talk with you. Hopefully for everybody listening, if you found this helpful, feel free to like and subscribe as always. It's great to deliver this information in a very meaningful way. Thank you, Sue. And I can't wait to reach out again. Thank you. Have a great day.

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