CHOOSING THE PERFECT WHITE PAINT

While choosing a paint color is an emotional choice, there are definitely some rules of thumb that you can follow to put you on the right path to editing down to the perfect shade for your home.

Selecting a paint color is a personal and an emotional choice and wading through the many shades to get to the right one can honestly be overwhelming. Recently in my stories I shared the process I use 100% of the time for selecting any paint color and in this particular case, picking the perfect white for my newly renovated kitchen. While choosing a paint color is an emotional choice, there are definitely some rules of thumb that you can follow to put you on the right path to editing down to the perfect shade for your home.

One of the very first things to keep in mind is that there is no true "white". White can have red, green, or yellow undertones which will create warmer, creamier shades for a cozy feeling in your home. On the flip side, white can also be based in tones of blue or green which create cooler, more crisp shades of white. Blue and green based whites are great for rooms that don't get a ton of direct sunlight because a cooler tone will compensate in many ways for a lack of sunlight and make the room feel bigger and brighter. Confusing, I know, but I promise, this context will be helpful for your future paint decision making.

My suggestion before you even start to select a white paint is to decide what feel you are trying to achieve in your space. Are you trying to create a warmer, more cozy feeling throughout your home or are you trying to create a space that feels vast and cleaner? Once you decide what the overall esthetic of your space will be, selecting the right shade of white will seem less daunting.

Another thing to keep in mind when trying to select the perfect white for your space is lighting. The lighting in your home, both natural (sunlight) and artificial (recessed, overhead or layered lighting) will absolutely affect how the white appears to the naked eye. Does the room get direct sunlight or very little to none at all? This is an important point of context because the same shade of white painted on different walls (in the same room) can react and appear different based on the amount of natural light that room/wall receives throughout the day. This is why I will always, always recommend generously swatching your shades of white on multiple walls throughout the room.

I guarantee that you will save more time and money by investing in the paint swatches up front than you would if you selected a color, hated it and had to repaint your entire room over again.

Paper paint chips are great tools to use to help you edit your paint shades, but investing in small, actual samples of your paint choices to swatch at home will be invaluable to the decision making process. I guarantee that you will save more time and money by investing in the paint swatches up front than you would if you selected a color, hated it and had to repaint your entire room over again.

For my kitchen renovation I narrowed my white paint options down to two - Farrow and Ball "Wevet" and "All White". I painted multiple swatches around the room and eventually decided on the All White, which is a pure white because my kitchen is on the southern part of the house and does not receive a ton of direct sunlight throughout the day. For the rest of my living and dining space on my parlor floor which gets a tremendous amount of sunlight during the day, I swatched Benjamin Moore "Chantilly Lace" and "Oxford White" on all walls and I lived with all of the swatches for days before going with Oxford White. Living with my options for a while enabled me to feel good about making a decision.

One last thing to consider as you're selecting a white for your space are the interiors - how do you plan to furnish your space? White walls will absorb some of the other colors in the room, so, if you plan on furnishing your room with colorful furniture and floor coverings, your white walls will start to reflect (or flare) a variation of that particular color affecting the way that your room as a whole presents to the naked eye. A more neutral color palette will likely live more harmoniously with your white walls with little color flare. That's not to say that your interior design should be void of color. Knowing how you plan on populating your room - with or without color - will help you decide which base tones you can start to work with for your white walls.

In the end, I don't believe that the one perfect white truly exists in it's own context because so many elements can make that "perfect white" look completely different from space to space. I do however believe that achieving the perfect white for you and for your space is possible with a little planning and controlled experimentation. Happy painting!