When Christopher Lyon walked into his Washington, D.C., home during his last renovation, he saw red.

Or rather, a dozen shades of off-white splashed on the walls in 2-foot squares, a neutral checkerboard that made him dizzy. “It looked like you were in some kind of modern art painting,” recalls Dr. Lyon, a retired educator.

After staring at the samples for weeks, Dr. Lyon gave his husband, Art Coleman, one final week to pick a paint color and get it on the walls. Mr. Coleman, an education policy and legal consultant who quite enjoyed testing different options, acknowledged the experiment had gotten out of hand and complied.

Choosing a shade of white paint from more than a thousand nearly identical hues has long been confounding. As homeowners flocked to hardware stores for renovation projects during the pandemic, sales of paint spiked, along with stress levels.

The process is only getting harder as companies roll out new variations with particular undertones for those looking to achieve a warm, crisp or cool vibe.