Paint brand and color recommendations

I am tackling painting my dining room. Have gone through 9 different samples so far and still haven't found the right color. FYI - Home Depot paint samples are $.98 each and Sherwin Williams samples are $8 each and they gave me a discount.

I follow the Hairy Armpit Girls on Facebook. They are married and the wife who writes the blog is hilarious! This is what she wrote about the color white:

Since we are in the process of moving, we have to go to the hardware store. We also just received a coupon from the hardware store but they don't do curbside pick up so one of us has to risk it to go in.
Jen does most of the building and handy stuff around here. I do most of the list making and neurotic behaviors.
Since she drew the short straw to be the one to do the dash into the hardware store, I decided to type my list of needs for her to pick up. I will be outside in the car, biting my nails and hoping she can pull off my list. Apparently I doubt her and may have trust and control issues.
At 5:30 a.m. I decided to write out my feelings about white paint and the color white just in general. After I finished the essay, printing it out and staring at her while she sleeps to see when the best time to give her my list will be (perhaps 5:45 on a Friday morning so she can prep herself?) I realized that Jen has a lot more patience than I give her credit for. Oh marriage.

Also. Benjamin Moore also has a color called Alabaster but it is totally different than the Sherwin Williams color. So make sure they do the Sherwin Williams color. Also get a print out of the formula that they are using to mix the paint in case we need more after we move just in case. Joanna Gaines painted her entire house in these colors so I am just trusting her judgment so I don’t get stuck in a downward spiral of emotions over a white color. It is a slightly off white color. Don’t be alarmed. I am sure about what I want. I think. I have given this way too much thought and have spent at least 2 hours of my life literally reading about various colors of white and I am crippled by it all. If you have another opinion of white, feel free to tell me about it but unless you are 100% researched and confident in your reasoning behind why white is white and why we should use your white over the thousands of other colors of white out there, then don’t come at me with that nonsense. I kinda want to lay in the floor in a fetal position and cry over the color of white. Did you know that the direction your windows face affects the way various whites look? I have looked at the map to see what directions our windows face so I can pick out white paint better. Now, if for some reason you are leaning towards White Dove by Benjamin Moore, I can kinda get that because that is my second choice of white. I am sure that there is no difference but my mental health cannot take any more thoughts of white. If you don’t get Sherwin Williams Alabaster then just don’t tell me. Just tell me whatever it is IS in fact Alabaster and I will probably believe you but I never want to have to think about or read about white aka the absence of color ever again. I can’t believe you just read this. Please still love me.

We had the interior of our house painted in Kelly Moore's Snip of Tannin and it looks great with our white baseboard and shutters. DH is a real estate broker and has many clients who have used this color when painting their house before putting it on the market.

When we built our house 18 months ago we painted the interior SW Repose Gray with white trim.  I love that in some light it looks gray and in some it takes on more of a greige tone (we have a lot of windows in our house and I think the extra light makes the paint lean toward the gray side.)  

If you're looking for a lighter color that leans white/greige take a look at SW On The Rocks.  We painted the outside of our house that color, with white trim and Charcoal Leuders stone and we've had several random people stop and knock on our door to ask us what color we used because they really like it.

I normally buy Behr paint from Home Depot.. We recently re-did 2 bedrooms and painted them Swiss Coffee--a nearly white, off the shelf so no mixing required. Master bedroom and bath were painted with same over 10 years ago, I've never had issues with it looking/turning yellow-y. It did take 2 coats to cover the very orange color on the craft room walls.

I painted our bathrooms in the last few years. I used SW paint in the downstairs bathroom and it is not looking good anymore at all. I used Behr in the upstairs bathroom (and that is what is in our bedrooms as well) and it looks much better. We had our kitchen and living room painted a few years ago as well and I think the painter used SW and it is fine. But with the experience in the bathroom I don't know that SW paint is worth the extra cost.

The samples were the small jars. They only had 2 brands available to choose from in the store - Behr and PPG.  Of course, if you bring up your own swatch/sample they can mix paint from other brands too. 

We used Behr for years, then switched to Sherwin Williams. I think it's much better. But, don't buy it at a big box store. Buy it at SW. I have heard from a reliable source the stuff at big box stores is not the same quality.

Our professional painter uses SW.

What finish did you use? That might make a difference. I know one painter told the contractor doing my bathroom painting that he did not ever use one of the available finishes, but now I can't remember for sure which it was. I think primer was important with that finish.