Choosing The Perfect White Paint?

Jul 31, 2021

Family and Home

The most asked question I get is what is your favourite go-to white. So today, let’s chat white paint.   If you’ve been following along my reno journey, you would’ve seen how many tester strips and boards I’ve painted in a matter of a week. Just so everyone knows, I am just a tad crazy about colour and how it renders. Not everyone can see these minute tonal differences but my world revolves around how colour is interpreted every single day. I am extremely picky with tones and this is one area I will fight until it’s perfect, and luckily Mike totally gets me.

White is tricky because white looks very different in every single home and there is variation between rooms, ceilings, baseboards, trims etc. and there is no one size fits all solution so I highly recommend painting 24×30 strips if you’re working on a large project and move it around from room to room to watch for changes throughout the day – how the light hits, when the light hits, what the undertones look like at different hours of the day. If you have normal height ceilings, I  personally prefer the ceiling and walls to be the same white so it provides a seamless and grander feeling throughout. If you have really tall or even vaulted ceilings, feel free to play around with different complimentary whites for your walls and ceilings as that creates a really unique look. Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury in height at our new place, which of course isn’t the end of the world. I want to create a space that is beautiful, functional and feels lived in with what we have.

After years of painting different projects, our previous ground floor reno I was almost certain my go-to white was Simply White until I rolled a giant strip of it on the main living area wall. Boy was I wrong, It was extremely yellow and the underdone was all I could see so that was immediately nixed and I went into a frenzy. I went through a series of Benjamin Moore colours – Chantilly Lace, Swiss Coffee (100%, 75% and 50%), Cloud White, Simply White and White Dove (100% and 50%). Then I went through a series of Sherwin Williams colours – Pure White, Alabaster, and Snow Bound. 

Fun fact, I always loved Chantilly Lace, I love how crisp and clean it is but it was almost too crisp for our home. I then went back and forth with testing White Dove at different strengths because it was one of the colours I really loved – the subtle grey undertones are so beautiful. Unfortunately, I don’t think my house has enough natural light to see it in all of its White Dove glory. Finally, I decided to give my main gal, Simply White another shot but this time at 50%. That was the winner, friends! Simply White at 50%.
I also wanted to point out that each paint shop (whether BM or SW) creates its strength formula differently so if you find a colour that you like, make sure you keep the label so the next paint mixer can re-create it for you.

I took a photo of my label in case anyone wanted the same mixture for their next project. You can just show this to any Benjamin Moore staff at any location and they’d be able to replicate this formula for you! 
It just blows my mind that after hundreds of dollars spent on paint samples, I ended up up with Simply White again. Trims are still TBD as it’s dependent on what colour I end up painting my interior doors and they most likely won’t be white….. There is actually not a whole lot of white in our new space!

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