Fifty Shades of White

Image via allsortsof.com

It is with trepidation that I write about white paints. Just the thought of it gives me anxiety. Of course, the fact that I can "stress" about paint colors is a privilege. After agonizing over endless swatches of white paint, Hubs and I joked about naming a white paint shade "White Privilege." But if you have the means to deliberate about paint colors at this time, I feel your pain.

We decided to paint a few of the rooms in our new house before moving in. Fortunately the house didn't need much work. But a few rooms had a greenish tint, and that wasn't the vibe we were going for. We wanted neutrals. But, there is a whole world of neutrals. There are like a million shades of white. White! And I wanted a greyish white. Like just subtly grey? Or maybe subtly beige? Hubs and I almost got divorced over the paint color decisions. Jk. Kind of.

I scoured designers' blog posts and stalked my friends who have good decor taste, all in search of the perfect white-ish paint color. I ordered a bunch of samples from Samplize and pored over them for days. The problem was, I couldn't see them in the new space. Everyone says: you must see the paint color in the actual room. A shade may look bluish in one light, greenish in another. We were planning a quick turnaround between closing on our new house, painting and moving in. (In fact, the painters were still painting on move in day.) There was no time to try out a color in the new house, so we made a gametime decision and chose the following colors for different rooms: Chantilly Lace (Benjamin Moore), Decorator's White (Benjamin Moore), Simply White (Benjamin Moore) and Snowfall (Sherwin Williams).

The new house already had some Benjamin Moore Linen White and Classic Gray, which we kept. All in all, our choices work. They are all basically shades of white, some cooler (temperature, not like, hipper) than others. But maybe cooler as in hipper too. Who knows. When you decide to paint your home, you will understand the "struggle," and you will appreciate this post. If you haven't painted recently nor are planning to, and you're still reading this post, bless your heart.

Also of note, we had Crushed Ice (Sherwin Williams) in our Hoboken apartment and loved it. If you want a good subtle gray-ish.

Lastly, below are some of the blogs I referenced while researching:
All Sorts Of 
Architectrual Digest 
Elle Decor 
Emily Henderson 
Emily Henderson 2.0 

Happy painting/stressing,
AES