Foyer Disaster "Mural"

I don't want to disillusion anyone into thinking that we don't have the occasional (or frequent) challenges at home.  For instance, I'm currently in a battle with my foyer walls which lead upstairs into a long hallway.  As I've mentioned before, I am slowly painting over the blah-tan color walls that were on every wall in our house aside from the kitchen when we moved in.  So far I've completed the dining room (Martha Stewart "Cumulus Cloud"), the living room (Behr "Gray Morning") and I thought the logical step would be to move on to the foyer/stair/hallway area.  I fear this might have been a mistake since I cannot for the life of me find a color that I like.

Here is how it started....with just a small patch of Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue:

and this is how it looked over the weekend with some larger patches of Benjamin Moore "Timberwolf" (right), another color I can't remember and the remains of a bright berry color that I tried for a second and quickly wiped off...

Then I got the idea of mixing the two gray colors and adding a little white...

..and added about five more swatches to the wall.  None of which I liked.  Then last night I got a sample of color matched Benjamin Moore "Silver Lake" and "Silver Moon".  I painted those on this morning and didn't get a chance to see them dried so I don't know what is waiting for me when we get home.  I haven't taken any more pictures yet but I'll do that tonight so you can see how disastrous it is. 

Oh yeah, and just to go back to this picture below, notice how some of the stairs are painted all white?  I got it in my head one night (after having a few glasses of wine) that I wanted all white stairs.  Then changed my mind after painting seven stairs.  They have been like this for about nine months, and now instead of being white, there is a lovely layer of dirt on each one.  When I say this is a learning experience, I mean, a BIG learning experience...

The ironic thing is, I kind of want to reconsider the Palladian Blue.  I think it's the most cheerful of all of them and the gray, no matter how light I go, seems dull and uninviting.  The battle continues!