Ughhhh white, my fav! If you follow our company instagram account you will see that I love white, Simply White from Benjamin Moore being one of my absolute favourites. But, white can be a little intimidating, although it is a light colour, white can be a bold choice, so here are some tips and tricks.
First off, why white?
A couple reasons...White can achieve a feeling of a larger space, it’s airy, light and bright and can make smaller rooms and areas appear bigger than they are. White is a great choice in spaces that are dark such as basements with minimal natural light, white can brighten up the space and make it more inviting.
White is a blank slate, it allows you to change up the decor using varies colours or styles without having to alter the fundamental aspects of the space such as wall colour, furniture and so on. For paint, I like to suggest to my clients to paint three walls white (or a light neutral) and then have one accent wall, this way if you want to change things up you only have to change one wall to create a different look. Similarly white pieces of furniture provide the same great appeal, allowing you to alter colours during all the seasons by having a neutral base such as a white couch and then adding different colour throw pillows.
So how do you choose?
Picking a white can be your first hurdle, its intimidating to fathom having to pick a white, I get asked all the time…”isn’t white just white”? The daunting answer, sorry, is no. There are many shades of white, you can get a warm white, cool white and white with many different hues, pink, blue purple and so on. So, it depends on where you are painting and what look you desire. My personal preference would be to d a warm white throughout a house, you could choose a pink white for a girls bedroom, green white for a bathroom or a blue white for a spare room.
Rule of thumb.... you typically carry the same principal colour throughout the main aspects of your home, living room, kitchen, hallways, family room, if you want to add a change of colour I would suggest doing this in bathrooms, laundry rooms or bedrooms. You want some unity between each space in your house, if you start painting each room a random colour it can cause a choppy feel to your home. Unity doesn't mean all white (unless your like me and that's what you like) it means finding a unity between your colour choices... I will do a post about this in the future.
So what do you do with trim and doors?
Paint it the same white! Literally from the same can, same paint brush, it doesn’t get much easier than that!! No cutting in, no tapping, literally doesn’t get any better!
Tip!!!
Go with a higher gloss then you normally would, I used satin (I would normally do eggshell) in our house that’s painted all white, because Josh has a tendency of touching every single wall somehow.... but only when he has dirt on his hands (insert eye roll) so with the higher gloss white, it makes it really easy to wash the walls!
L & J