The part about forty parents just staring at the projector got me, because I read a thing once about how people judge a logo from across a room way before they ever see it up close. Small details like which way a wave curls totally vanish at that distance, but the overall shape still reads. A frown is a frown from fifty feet, you know? What that article said to do is shrink your logo down to like the size of a stamp and squint at it, or better yet flip it upside down, because your brain stops filling in what it expects and just sees the shape. Also test it in straight black and white with no color, since colors trick your eyes into liking stuff that's actually lopsided. Do those checks on your laptop with the brightness all the way down too, because projectors wash everything out compared to a monitor.

Building the whole thing around the accent sounds like a good way to end up with a deck that screams. Neutrals are boring on purpose. They give the eye somewhere to rest, and if your accent was sitting ignored the real problem might have been scale or contrast, not the order you picked colors in. Picking from an office photo also means your client's bad carpet and weird lighting get baked into their brand.