I struggled in my bedroom to get the right shade of off white. I had bm bone and it was too gray for me, too cold. I wanted something warmer. Couldn't get it with bm and went instead with PPG parchment and I love it. The alcove, ceiling and trim are BM bone. The wall is the parchment. (It reads more yellow in this pic than it does in real life.)

What's really interesting, is the parchment looks exactly like the bone when the sunlight hits it. In fact, I did not repaint the nook at all...only the walls, yet the sun in the nook makes it look like exactly the same color...I find it so interesting, when, in the alcove, they look so different.

BM Linen White? Yellow undertones and warm.

That Linen White is beautiful.

China White is pretty gray and can look dreary.

Have you tried french canvas?

One of the good things in some lights about the China White is the gray. It can go a little drab but it doesn't tend to go yellow (Even in the oil-base version which does yellow). So in some lights it goes warm but stays "white" rather than getting yellow.

Linen White looks totally drab in our guest room. Not at all creamy like the posted picture.

What palimpsest said about the gray. We ended up using Dove Wing for much of our house because it has that touch of gray and though it goes warm at times, it does not go yellow in any light. Yet it reads white. It cost me zillions of dollars in off white paint samples just to figure that out about the gray.

I hope this thread does help others. No need for apologies and thank you all for sharing pictures and suggestions.

Well, I have 6 more samples to go up today. I think DH is convinced I have lost my mind, but he did pick up the following for me:

Feather down, Navajo white, Fine China, , china white, mayonnaise, Elephant tusk, and I think I have one more sample I didn't get to try yet, cream yellow or something it is called.

I am running out of room on the primed splotches he made for me on the blue walls!

I will say that some of the samples look ok in the hall and some look OK In the Family room. The light is so different. Eventually this will go in the down stairs hall, upstairs hall, family room and kitchen. Possibly the DR (which is now a playroom) I dont think it will look fabulous in all rooms, but hopefully it will look great in some and ok in the others :)

Thanks for posting that link as well Allison. Will check it out today.

This post was edited by boopadaboo on Mon, Aug 11, 14 at 12:26

I think you need to paint bigger test patches. But I know that's hard to do. I went and bought several foam backed poster boards and painted them with the sample colors. Then I could move them around the room and get the different lighting affect.

It's tough picking colors. I did my kitchen cabinets in Dove White. I did like Navajo White but it was a little taupe for cabinets.

If the rooms have "breaks" you don't have to pick just one. If the same white looks different in different rooms, you may be able to choose a couple of whites that look the Same in different rooms because of the differing light.

We used elelphant tusk in our old bedroom before we sold it and it looked very cold and gray to me.

Annie, that's so funny. It's not going gray at all here. Maybe it's the light? I definitely was going for a warm off white/beige, and that's how it reads to me. Another pic, Elephant tusk on the wall, SW window pane on the ceiling, and Simply White on the trim.

Wow...this is not my room, but more representative of what elephant tusk looked like to me.

I think that's the problem with suggesting paint colors. The Linen White in my west-facing, bright DR looks very much like the pic I posted above, perhaps slightly less yellow.

It is really crazy! I put up a swatch of featherdown because it looked so lovely above. Yikes. looked like a duck stuck his butt in an ash tray in my room.

I do think as recommended that I should paint bigger swatches but I want to narrow that down first. I cant have 10 giant swatches. I don't have that much room. :) Right now I think I have about 12 -15 swatches in two places.

DH likes collector's item and navajo white. I think the first is a bit too peach and the latter is a bit too yellow. I think it is fine looking at a small swatch of it, but walls and walls of it will look like we picked peach or yellow paint.

I am leaning towards Gardenia or mayonnaise. They are slightly whiter then I was thinking though. I dont' know if it is because they are brighter that i like them (LRV) or what it is.

I did try china white and it looks very grey in my rooms. FIne china is flat out pink.

I did mention to DH that we could paint a different off white in each room and you should have seen the look I got! :) which I do understand. We end up touching up our walls often at this point in life and I can just see the splotches of mixed up touch ups now.

I think he will think I am insane if I go get more samples. I am not really sure what to do now or if more samples will really help.

I did read that article Allison. it was interesting. I don't think they have the codes on line for BM so I have to go home and look at the cans to see if they are there.

Mayonnaise:

Gardenia:

Navajo white:

Collector's item:

They really look so innocent and white like on my monitor. In my house - they look so much more intense.

I know you've already gotten a million suggestions and one more might not help, but my personal favorite is BM Swiss Coffee (OC-45). We have it all over our house right now and it's a nice soft warm white. It contrasts well with the brighter white of our trim but does not itself make much of a statement (if that's what you're going for).

Boop - Her is Mayonnaise in my mudroom. I love it in there - filled w/ tons of natural light, I'm iffy on it in the adjoining kitchen which has zippo light. Now let me say this about the kitchen Mayonnaise: I had it mixed elsewhere - not at BM and I don't think that they shook it well enough because as I got to the paint at the bottom of the can - well that side go the kitchen leans heavily yellow. I like it on the other walls so I will give it a shot again once I am ready to really knock out our kitchen for real.

BM Mayonnaise in my Mudroom:

Love, love, love it here on the brick wall:

Here I think you can see the difference in white undertones. The ceiling white (original) is very grey next to the Mayonnaise & I forgot to note to you that the white door is also the original white. Again grey and dingy compared to the wall & door trim.

Thanks TheFoxesPad. Mayonnaise sure does look fabulous in your rooms. I think you have Ivory Porcelain in your hallway too correct? that looked amazing so I was going to try a swatch of that, but featherdown is one down and looks bad so I didn't bother.

I suppose if I was going to go for one more round I would try...

Windswept...

{{!gwi}}

timid white...

vanilla ice cream...

sugar cookie...

However, I am about ready to give up! :( will any of those be that perfect elusive color????? How will I know if I don't try? :)

I picked the blue I have lived with for 5 years from the fan deck and I don't want to make that mistake again.

Rather than paint the wall, get some foam core and paint that ... then you can move it from wall to wall in the rooms and you won't have a wall that looks like measles.

Ooooh Jackson - your room is fabu! I love those paint colors with the dragon fabric.

tina

Excellent suggestion Annie! I always found it too hard to determine the right color from small swatches. I finally started to bite the bullet and paint 1 wall. Foam core sure would have been a better way to go!

My built in's upstairs are painted Vanilla Ice Cream. I really like them. I'd take a picture of them but there really isn't much to see.

Of all of the colors my hallway has been I've really liked 2: The Porcelain Ivory (or vice verse I forget) & the SW Pure White. The Ivory was really soft but I wanted crisper. I kept it for about 2 - 3 yrs so the Ivory was a real winner for me.

Is there anything on the Delaware Putty strip that might work? My office was DP for a long time and I really liked that & I know that my hallway was based off of DP.

How about a sand? BM White Sand?

My living room is painted with BM White Sand on the walls and BM White Dove on the trim:

So pretty Tibbrix! That does look like a potentially good option.

Tibbrix, I love the BM Sand White on your walls! I am going to try that color in my Master Bathroom that now has BM Navajo White on the walls but it is a bad paint job.

So funny, because I'm not fond of the White Sand and am hoping I can work up the energy to repaint my living room this fall. I actually love the White Sand in the morning and at night, but for a portion of the day, it looks peachy to me, which I don't like. However, keep in mind my ceiling. White Sand, ultimately, is a very pale tan, I'd say. What's good about it is that it is neither warm nor cool. It's really a medium color in terms of warmth.

I actually think it would be a very good color for a bathroom, giving it a spa-like look. However, everything depends on lighting!

Thank you for the compliments, btw!

Have you looked at BM White Dove? It's a beautiful creamy white. I'm considering it for trim with Manchester Tan and Grant Beige.

I see colors as much warmer in one eye than in the other, and I have no idea which eye is lying to me. Maybe both of them. They're sneaky little things. What that means in practice is the little tiny miniscule paint chips mean nothing to me. Can't get a clue.

After lots of failed-roof water damage, we moved out for a while and completely repaired our house's walls and ceilings (territorial, very simple layout) and just sprayed everything everywhere the exact same satin white. Couldn't make a decision so that sort of "temporary" stopgap was acceptable.

Three years later I came home from the store with a gallon of eggshell light peach and just painted the front entry hallway. On a whim. Skipped over the trim. Then I lived with it for about a week, took the rest of the paint in the can and cut it a little over fifty percent with production (cheap!) eggshell white, and painted two more walls.

Lived with that for a week or so and then came home from the store with a gallon of chocolate brown. Same process. Used some of that brown to adjust the white/peach leftovers for yet another wall.

This has continued at a steady and very unhurried pace and it's very satisfying. All walls were/are painted corner-to-corner, so nothing looks sloppy. A couple of times I went back and re-painted a wall with an "adjusted" color and there was no anguish and everything turned out hunky dory. The only rebuke was a bright yellow in the kitchen that was re-coated in a hurry with something completely different (coffee-ish), but that too was OK.

What I mean to say is that painting one wall at a time is unhurried, unstressful, and doubt-clobbering. It's easy to repaint, and you get plenty of time to judge the results and to get feedback from visitors. Not doing the whole room (or the whole house!) all at once causes no real disruption. One wall at a time is a piece of cake to patch tack holes and to tape off. No part of the project is a big mess.

And you can just feel your color way as you go.

You are patient Grubbyme!

thank you Tibbrix and TheFoxesPad!!!

I definitely dont' want peachy. I would prefer yellowy to peachy.

I do think my measles as Annie put it are throwing me off. So DH is going to prime both big areas over my splotches today and then paint them both Mayonnaise. I am leaning towards that one I think. Sometimes it looks like a pale yellow and sometimes not. I think that is better than looking pale yellow sometime and a bad yellow others if that makes any sense. :)

I am having a hard time with this in general because to me light walls like this have always looked unfinished. my last house had all primed walls when we got it and slowly I painted them all deep rich colors. it was a different house with nice features such as crown molding, lots of natural light, big rooms., 5 fireplaces, etc.

This house is so different and I started out treating it the same way and it is so not working! So we shall see how it goes. :) This house also has this dark wood trim. Maybe we will paint that at some point too, but for now we are starting with the walls.

I am just hoping my artwork, curtains, rugs, etc don't look odd with the light walls. I am planning to take it one room at at a time and figure it out!

OK well Mayonnaise did not cut it. I went out and got three more samples. Sugar cookie, Windswept, and Vanilla ice cream. I did look at the cards for some of the others mentioned above too.

I did vanilla ice cream on the mayonnaise and you could barely tell a difference. it was slightly creamier. Then I did windswept.

Hurray! we have a winner. DH likes it too. Whoo Hoo. so glad to have that decided. :)

Thank you all for the help.

I was going to suggest BM Natural Cream. I'm going to paint my DR with it.

Be careful with Windswept. I'd put it swatches of it on all four walls and check it in different light throughout the day for a few days. That color has some heavy-duty neon-green undertones.

Interesting. I don't see green at all in it, but will look again in the morning. The natural cream looks like grey undertones to me. I am looking for yellow.

I wish that BM was more forth coming with the info from fincolrs in the article that Allison linked. I can't tell foe even the codes on the pint can which family it belongs in. It is one down from Navajo white on the paint strip and one up from sugar cookie.

boop, google BM Windswept and click on the first Ben Moore site. Under the large swatch of the Windswept, you'll see, on the right, the strip of its undertones. Pretty neon!

Doesn't mean it won't look great, of course! I'd just do a swatch on all four walls and look at them throughout the day for a few days.

I have China White all over the place and get lots of compliments. There is nothing dingy about it. Dover White is also great.

Funcolors - want to see if I am understanding this correctly: The higher the # before the letter designation the less of that hue will be in it and will have more undertones of its neighboring hue. Once you hit mid # it will be more 'in the middle' (balanced between the 2 neighboring hues) & the lesser the # the more it will have undertones of it's closest neighboring hue?

First let me clarify that Benjamin Moore does not have a color system or notations for their colors.

I used this color wheel and plotted the BM colors, Windswept and Natural Cream, on the wheel to show where they fall in terms of hue family.

If a color collection, like Benjamin Moore, does not have color notations I can reverse engineer a couple things and figure out an approximate notation so the color can be plotted on a wheel.

Cozy Light and Kiva Glow are Glidden colors - not BM and I left those on there for comparison.

To answer your question, 30-60 is middle of the road. The hue parent, in this example yellow, will dominate. In this range, expect slight to no overtones from a the left or right neighboring hue family.

Anything to the left 60-99, or to the right 30-00, and overtones from the neighboring hue family (left or right) should be expected.

funcolors thank you for taking the time to help. Your posts are always so informative!

Painting has begun....

This is when we moved in - wallpaper, red and cream tile and lace curtains. (the PO was a bit colorblind I think. The master bedroom had orange walls and huntergreen carpet!)

an interim pic

And now hoping we have found our identity :)

I am also hoping I can get DH to paint the door.

Boopadaboo, I can't wait to see all the finished rooms! Are you using BM Windswept?

thanks Lynn. Yes I absolutely love Windswept. In our location/lighting it is the exact warm cream color I had in my mind. So worth 20 paint samples (maybe more) and three or four trips to BM.

It is not photographing well, but I love it! ( I will probably switch out this painting but I have not gotten up to the attic to see what is there yet)

Not glamorous, but useful coat hanging...

I have not read magazines in a long time and we dont have cable so no HGTV but somehow I keep wondering if I am somehow being sucked in by neutral walls in media or on trend. Either way, the color I had there was not working and I like this so it is what it is :)

Of course I still love color, and the lack of color on the walls is making me think I need a new foyer rug....

I kind of like this one. It says wool, and current bid is $17. but it seems a tad big...

Boopadaboo,

I used to have colors on walls when I was growing up. Then when I saw the townhouse I am now living in with all neutral colors in the house and on the walls, it felt so beautiful, peaceful and elegant to me. I told the painter to patch up the holes in the wall from the seller's pictures and paint it the same color. I should have just left the newly painted walls alone and added pictures everywhere the seller did! The paint was too white with a touch of yellow with no white trim and I hated it.

Finally years later when I repainted after trying so many off-white colors, I found I loved BM Bone White in most rooms but two where they appeared a totally different color. I painted the trim BM White. I found the door that I never painted over in one of the rooms that I keep storage in and it is similar to what I finally chose! My Master Bedroom is Ralph Lauren Deep Cream. I hated that same color in my Master Bathroom and repainted it BM Navajo White which I wish was a tad darker and since the paint job is so bad by the painter, one day I must get around to repainting it.

The guest bedroom is painted BM Philadelphia Cream which changes color throughout the day and is not my favorite. The rest of the house is so peaceful in BM Bone white. My other two bathrooms are Ralph Lauren Deep Cream and they need a new wall color but I just live with this one despite it not working that well in these two rooms. I love color with accents and my reddish Brazilian Cherry Floors. I like peaceful wall colors I have learned.

So glad you love the color you chose for your walls. Color is important to many of us and I feel it affects mood. Some people feel better with bright colors on the wall and others with dark less bright colors and others with neutrals.

With neutral walls, you are free to add accent colors that you can change out when you feel like it.

We just painted our hallways and foyer with BM Elmira white walls and Dove white trim and ceilings. Medium brown stained wood floors. We are happy.

nightowlrn, I would love to see pictures! Please... :)

I put a photo that shows the halls in another post asking about great room furnishing help. I didn't adjust my photo for the lighting, etc, so it isn't the best example. You can also do a houzz search. We are still quite pleased with the result.

Here is a link that might be useful: BM Elmira White Hall and White Dove Trim

nightowlrn, I love the color on your walls with the white trim! Neutral walls give such a calm to a space. Thank you for sharing.

I agree, nightowlrn your room is lovely! - Lynn you are totally right on about the serene feeling. I think the other color we had was just discordant and you dont realize how much it affects you.

I know these pics dont do it justice and you cant see much but i am just so happy with the transformation. it is the exact color I was hoping for - creamy and rich without leaning (I forgot the right word that funcolors said to use) of green, pink, peach, blue, etc. Love love love it! DH does too I think since he has been painting some everyday.

Thank you all again for chiming in and helping me decide and giving suggestions. I doubted I would find the perfect color and almost gave up and I am so glad I went one more time for samples :)

excuse the mess, all is not put back to gether yet..

I am hoping DH finishes the upstairs hallway (it is pretty small) in the next day or two. I have black and white prints I have been thinking I would hang up gallery style there for about 2 years but it didnt seem worth doing withthe paint that was there. I am sure he will love all the holes in his fresh walls. :)

I will be posting for some tips on gallery walls next.

White sand is a perfect color❣

Looks lovely. What color is your trim? And what would be the next shade darker than White Sand?

what color would go with vanilla ice cream?

Elisabeth Saczek, The BM White Sand Walls look so nice in your room. I feel the color needs light as it did not look good in my bedroom from the Samplize sample as I have no overhead lighting.