I just finished up some interior painting and it has been an exhaustive endeavor. First off I used the paint the previous owners left behind and it looked bad and smelled bad, but I mixed it up and used it and it didn't match at first. I thought, I'd let it dry and it'd match up.....nope.
I went to several paint stores to try to get the matching colors and could never get it right. I would use it on several walls thinking it'd dry and match up, but it never would.
Finally we contacted the builder of the house and got the paint codes and what store they bought the paint from. Could still not get the color to match perfectly and was told the manufacturer went to a different supplier....(?) so it was hard to match it up.
I ended up cutting a section of painted wall to take in to get a match, finally got it right but my mistake was only buying one gallon, I should've bought a 5-gallon bucket of it. I used up the gallon and went to get more and again, no match from the same store using the same paint codes and even brought the empty can of the matching paint to the store and they had to experiment to get it close, but it still did not match up.
I'm thinking h*ly sh*t, they have ONE job, match the f*cking paint color! So out of frustration and wanting to finally finish the project after a year and a half of attempting I just gave up and painted entire walls with the different tone of paint and leaving the adjacent walls the previous tone.
Everyone I tell doesn't notice until I point it out to them, but I certainly can see it and it is annoying as hell.