How do you choose a paint color? Lots of deliberation, maybe painting some samples on the wall? Seems pretty normal.
Well, one family decided to go a different route. They crowdsourced their neighborhood for opinions on their new house color, and wound up getting a lot more than they had bargained for.
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Meet the Landreths.
They’re a frankly adorable family based in Portland, Oregon.
Like many families, they’re in the midst of doing some good ol’-fashioned home schooling due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Their house badly needed painting.
So they decided to get some advice from the people who will see it most.
“We don’t want to be that neighbor with that bright ugly house that everyone sees every day,” Brian Landreth told KGW8 News.
They decided to do a small project on statistical analysis for their daughter, Grace.
Emphasis on small. They picked five possible colors for their new house paint, then painted swatches on the side.
They then put up a scannable QR code. It was intended mostly for their neighbors to use to vote. Cute, right?
The survey is pretty funny.
Here are the rankings:
“1 being HGTV level amazing and 5 being ‘Yuck, I seriously can’t look at that color everyday.'”
The paint options were Rocky Mountain, Wild Orchid, In Good Taste, Blessed Blue, and It’s Well.
A few neighbors initially participated.
About 60 people filled out the survey, which is a pretty good number! It’s even higher than I would have expected.
But then…then things got out of hand in a beautiful, hilarious way.
Enter Michal.
Michal is one of the Landreth’s neighbors. While out for a walk, he snapped a picture of the choices and the QR code.
Then he posted it to the internet.
You can guess what happened next.
The post quickly went viral.
You can see why. This is a decision that warrants a lot of opinions. For instance, if they don’t pick option two, I can and will be disappointed. It’s clearly the best choice. Thank you.
ANYWAY.
Michal also posted the link to the Google Doc link for the survey.
It was quickly flooded with responses. 100,000 or so, to be precise.
I hope they all voted for Wild Orchid.
Brian got wind of the post after it went viral.
People were very excited to participate in the choosing of his house color. They even replied to his tweets with their color choices — without filling out the survey.
C’mon, guys. Rules!
He then had to amend the survey.
Since so many responses flooded in, he chose to add some funny options. This one is my favorite:
“By checking you indicate you have no opinion on the color of our house, but you just like doing random surveys.”
The only option was “Yes.”
The survey closed on June 1st.
We now all have to wait until June 7th to find out what color they picked. You can follow Brian on Twitter to get the 411 on their new house color!
UPDATE: WE HAVE A COLOR.
The Miller Paint Company got wind of this whole crazy situation and decided to get involved.
In addition to providing the paint, they also donated to the Harriet Tubman Middle School PTA, where the Landreths’ daughter goes!
News crews were on hand to find out what the result was.
They were joined by people from the Miller Paint Company and CertaPro Painters, who provided the family with supplies to paint their house in its new color!
The final vote count was over 150,000.
Yup, 150,000 people voted in their house poll. Did I vote for Wild Orchid, aka purple? Yes. Did I get my way?
Spoiler alert: No, no I did not.
And the color is…
Number 4, aka Blessed Blue! It’s no Wild Orchid, but I’ll allow it. The Landreths were thrilled with the decision, and happily announced it on social media after the reveal.
In the end, this story wound up wholesome af.
Not only did the Landreths help teach their daughter a valuable lesson in statistics, they got a new house color out of it. And their school got a $500 donation from Miller Paint!
See? Wholesome.
