I am about to paint a lower level. The entire 1200 sq/ft, all one room, has glass block windows facing east (a few feet from a neighboring house) and west - where there is an open yard area, and the windows are deep-set into the 2-foot-thick stone foundation walls, so no view, and little light comes in. I bought Sherwin Wlliams High Reflective White in SW’s Emerald line in Satin, and had 4 shots of white colorant added to aid coverage. I plan to spray the room and ceilings.

I bought High Reflective White in SW because of it’s high LRV, but without seeing the chip, as I assumed it would read as pure white as Sherwin Williams can get, but it looks more kind of creamy beige with a yellowish cast. I wanted a cool white, and usually my go-to for that is Atrium White (by I think Ben Moore, which I have heard is bluish or pink)

I fear that this will just look dirty on the walls and ceiling. I am putting some bright colored furnishings in this room, with a ‘60s caramel brown leather sectional, blue glass and green ceramic lamps, a mostly purple and orange cinema poster repro, and some graffiti art I plan to try my hand at myself, along with natural oak bookshelves that I might paint all or part of either blue or teal. I also was planning to use Carolina Panthers Blue on parts of the wall and ceiling. It is a bright aqua. I have 100-year-old oak floors that, when refinished with pure tung oil, darkened up quite a bit.

HELP! I really don’t like yellowish whites. Does anyone know of a website that will let me virtually add blue to this paint and see what the result might be?

It is 10 gallons of expensive paint, and I am covering up an already dirty-looking off-white painted by the previous homeowner, so I don’t want a lighter shade of the same thing. I looked at it under halogen lighting, LED bulbs, and daylight, and I just don’t like it.

I know I made a mistake not getting and painting a sample first, but it was SO HARD to FIND these 10 gallons of High Reflective White base, and I was so sure the high LRV would save me.

I can’t believe I made this rookie mistake. Any way to make this into a cool white instead of a warm one? I’d even be happy with a little purple in it, as that is what a white envelope looks like next to this. Here’s a picture of the actual paint on the Sherwin Williams greenish-looking card, and on a “white” envelope.

RESOLUTION: I was determined that even if it meant my walls would be slightly blue or purple, at least I wasn't going to have them look yellow.

So, I took all my gallons of High Reflective White with 4 shots of white colorant mixed into them back to the store, and asked the Assistant Manager, Molly, who was super helpful, to let me "play with" a tiny bit of blue and a tiny bit of magenta colorant there in the store. She re-shook the can for me, and put the colorants on a card, and we opened the paint, and I scraped a little off the inside of the lid onto another card in two splotches, dipped the teeny tiniest amount of blue into one splotch and the same mount of magenta onto the other. And the tiniest amount of blue colorant seemed to do the trick, so, with a bit of trepidation, asked, "what's the smallest amount of colorant that thing can spit out?" and she said "1/128th of an ounce, and that's what is there." I looked at the size of the scraping of wet paint and the amount of the colorant I used, and the whole bit of colorant and the gallon, and said, "okay, add 1/128th of blue to this gallon and let's see what we get."

Well, it is not THAT different, and I even thought about maybe going for another 1/128th of blue, but it DID make the paint look much cleaner, so I had her do the same to all the gallons of paint, and brought it home. I'm going to do a big sample on the wall, but I think it's enough blue to get rid of the majority of the yellow-green undertone for me to live with.

Lesson learned.

Again. I mean, it's not like I didn't already know I shouldn't choose a paint without looking at it, and testing it. I just was too focused on moving forward with my timeline, and took other people's word for this High Reflective White being a pure white. But when you do a deeper dive into the web results, you will find online an analysis that says it has a yellow-green undertone. And I know I like COOL colors, and especially cool whites, not warm ones.

Everyone at this Sherwin Williams store has been wonderful, and 2 people are especially knowledgeable. So, shout-out to Adam and Molly!!!!

Okay, time to do my test on the wall. Fingers crossed I can start spraying tonight, but if I need more blue in it, I know "the guys" at SW will have my back tomorrow morning!