Finding the Right White
By Christa TerryTexas hottie Jo writes:
I’m planning to paint my bedroom white. It’s got three windows, two on the south side and one on the west side. I live in Texas, so those are bad exposures in terms of heat and light. Right now the bedroom is a cool bluish-green, which is nice, but I’m looking for something more minimalist.
How on earth do I choose a good, cool white for the bedroom? Do you think it’d be okay to keep the trim Behr Ultra Pure White as it is now, or should I go with a tone closer to a greyed-down white? For what it’s worth, the floors are red oak and the ceiling, after I paint it, will be a blue–something like Yolo’s Water 03.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can give. To give you some idea of how big an idiot I am when it comes to picking colors, I’d originally intended to paint the bedroom peach…..which made it into a blast furnace, visually, before I even got the first wall halfway done.
I can feel your pain, having had a similarly exposed bedroom once upon a time, While I was not in Texas — far from it, in fact — the room in question, for all its window-y goodness, rarely received anything resembling a breeze. In the winter, I baked; in the summer, I broiled, unless I had the AC going around the clock. The good news is that while you can’t change all that much about the way sunlight affects a space thermodynamically, you can change the feel of that space using things like paint and furniture.
Now, first and foremost, cut yourself some slack. Knowing that white isn’t just white puts you one step ahead of many novice home designers! For some context, there are 140 different shades of white in Benjamin Moore’s Off White Collection and hundreds (if not thousands) of whites sold by other paint manufacturers. That said, I’m really digging on the grayish white idea, but for the walls rather than the trim. For what it’s worth, Behr “Ultra Pure White” is one of the cleanest and whitest reasonably-priced white paints out there, and it goes well with a wide range of other whites, so I wouldn’t worry too much about mucking about with the trim unless you’re really keen to paint it.

The benefit of choosing a really, really, reeeeally light gray (or is that quite a dark white?) is that a soft cool neutral can make both the heat and the light entering your space via the windows seem less intense. I know from experience that while an intense stark white can have a cooling effect, it can also ramp up the impact of light, making an otherwise normal bedroom feel like an operating theater or psychiatric cell. And warmer whites? Well, remember what happened with the peach? I get the sweats just thinking about it. As for the YOLO Water.03 on the ceiling, however, I love it!
Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to point you toward a specific color that will solve all of your problems, my ability to browse hues is limited by the vagaries of computer design. What looks on my monitor like the white that will solve all your problems — YOLO Air.05, Benjamin Moore White Heron, and Rodda Paint Co. Mercury come to mind — might very well turn out to be too greenish, too blueish, too dark, or too something else when viewed on your monitor or in person. That said, Colorcharts.org has a paints and stains gallery that lets you check out whites, off-whites, and other paint colors from a bunch of different manufacturers before you ever step foot in a hardware store paint aisle.
Settling on the right white paint, as difficult as it can be, can also be fun. Once you have some whites in mind, contact the manufacturer to find out if they offer either poster-size “chips” or mini-cans. Hang up the poster chips and/or paint largish squares of white on your walls to see how they look in the daytime, the afternoon, the evening hours, and finally, under artificial light at night. It shouldn’t take you long to figure out which whites subdue the intensity of the light streaming into your bedroom while still looking sharp once the sun has gone down and coordinating well with both your red oak floors and your uniquely hued ceiling. The hard part will be choosing between those that satisfy your needs!
(Photo by Andrea_R)
May 4th, 2009 at 6:45 am
I had excellent luck with the sample room pics on the Behr website. It accurately pictured that what looked steel grey on the sample card would look blue next to a white trim.
May 4th, 2009 at 7:01 am
NtB, you ROCK! Thank you so much for answering this question. I promise that I’ll send you before and after pictures of the room and its contents…when I finally get it done.
Off to check out websites.
May 5th, 2009 at 4:32 am
NtB, you ROCK! Thank you so much for answering this question. I promise that I’ll send you before and after pictures of the room and its contents…when I finally get it done.
Off to check out websites.
BTW I love your blog!
November 12th, 2009 at 2:21 am
We had the worst time picking out the shades of white we have in the bathroom, bedroom, and living room. All our stuff is so colorful that we wanted to keep the walls neutral, but we didn’t want to cover everything in the same old boring white. In the end we went for a grayish white and two warmer whites. It’s not really obvious that they’re different unless you’re looking for it, but it gives our flat a certain something.