I was standing with my cousin in her kitchen chatting about how a little paint can always spruce up a space. “I just want to paint it white,” she said, and I gave her a lovingly skeptical look. “There’s no such thing as just white,” I responded, earning my own lovingly skeptical look.
And I hear her -- there is a theoretical charm to just slapping some white paint up — it’ll feel clean, it'll feel fresh, it can even feel cottage-y and cozy in the right architecture.
But faced with, say, the 152 options in Benjamin Moore’s “Off White Collection” alone, clean becomes sterile, fresh becomes chilly, and cozy is nowhere to be found.
White paint is arguably the hardest “color” out there to navigate in design.
So how do we manage it?
Here are some tips for evaluating different white to help you avoid losing your mind and ultimately select the best option.
Undertone
The most obvious place to start is considering what hue family a particular shade of white may be part of. Now, circling back to those lovingly skeptical looks, I have had plenty of clients look at me like a mythical creature as I emphatically encourage them to take in the nuanced (i.e. nearly invisible) differences between two shades of white. But guess what: once I hold them up in relation to another color — say, two different trim options against a gorgeous grey-green — something starts to emerge. “Oh wait, why does that suddenly look so pink?” Or, “No, something about that feels too cold.” Once our eye adjusts to these nuances, it can then be easier to see the differences between whites in relationship to each other, as well.
So, our biggest rule of thumb: shades of white are best deciphered in relationship to other colors. Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that this is true of any color, but when excavating the subtleties between Benjamin Moore’s Steam and Mascarpone (two of our favorite trim colors), context is your best friend and will likely help you to perceive Steam’s crisp cleanness next to Mascarpone’s creamy softness.
Light
If we had a nickel for every client whose house we walked into and immediately told them to change out their lightbulbs, someone else would be ghost writing this newsletter for us. Light is of course the critical factor in color perception, and that means that the quality of that light can have a massive impact on your space. This impact comes not only through light bulbs, but your windows themselves.
Many clients drawn to white paint are seeking to highlight the natural light flooding a space, and this I think is why many architects default to this option, as well. But something important to keep in mind when capturing that natural light is that many newer home have what is called Low-E (low emission) glass which blocks ultraviolet and infrared lighting. This makes your home more energy efficient and protects your furnishings, but it can create a sickly green cast on your white walls. The only way to really understand whether this will be an issue is to paint an entire wall (two coats) and see how it reads. But keep in mind that, again, context is everything.
Reflection
And what happens when that light starts to bounce around? There are so many surfaces inside (and outside) the space that will start to interact with the "blank" canvas of a white wall. Reddish floors will “lend” pink. Orange-y or yellowish floors will cast up a golden light. This is part of why we advise a flooring that is as neutral as possible, unless you have a very specific and intentional aesthetic vision in mind.
And it’s not just interior elements that have this effect. It could be trees reflecting green into your home, or a brick wall adjacent to a window. Years ago, Amy worked on a house where the neighboring structure was a peach color and indeed they had to contend with glowing peach light streaming in while picking colors!
I've recently been smitten with searching for the “perfect" shades of white -- and I think part of that draw for me is the puzzle. A million factors go into human perception of any color, but white paint takes the cake. I hope these tips help to expand your curiosity and empower your creativity, and if you need a nerdy color pro to help excavate the possibilities and pitfalls of white paint, you know where to find us.
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