Paint colors, and white paints specifically, are difficult to choose. Being that I am a huge online shopper/decision-maker, I like to research all the options out there, not just what’s in one or two hardware stores. Recently, I have been deciding on white colors for some rooms in our house.
Quick back story if you’re new around here! We moved in in August and had to do a lot of renovating. The bones are great and the previous owners took a lot of pride in their home but cosmetically it needed a lot of updating. Red carpet, linoleum, wallpaper, and even a wall all came out. We wanted to fix up the main living areas and our master bedroom first which was all completed by mid-December. Now we are moving on to other rooms which inlcude the hall bathroom, the two spare rooms, and our master bathroom. The hall bathroom was completely redone and updated by the previous owners right before they put it on the market but they left it primed and unpainted to allow the buyers to do what they pleased…and THANK GOODNESS because she wanted to wallpaper it…ugh. We painted the master bathroom the same color as our bedroom but the hall bathroom and the two spare bedrooms need to be painted. Everything in this house was/is cream and this weird pinkish, brownish hue cream. The appliances. The trim. The doors. The outlet covers. The outlets. The light switches. Literally everything. It makes everything seem old and dirty so I need white to brighten and clean the spaces up.
I chose the trim color of our house when we were initially choosing paint colors in Fall 2019 for our main living areas and master bedroom. I researched and researched white trim colors and since I ultimately wanted a true clean white, I went with Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace. It was exactly the type of white that I wanted and that was needed to freshen up the house. Our hall bathroom has a light wood-look tile and a darker large wood vanity with a white marble top, and the shower has tan tiles. I have a large dark green framed mirror that we will be putting in there so the clean white of Chantilly Lace also seemed like the perfect wall color for it. So that leaves our two spare rooms that we have to decide paint colors for. I chose two paint samples to swatch and I quickly realized that while paint colors are difficult to choose, white paints are a whole other level of difficulty.
The three white paints that I have swatched are Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace, Magnolia Silos White, and Magnolia Shiplap. All three different undertones and can be used for different feels. The photo taken are the true colors with no filter, swatched on a quickly primed wall facing east with a window adjacent to it. You can see that we got new white switchplates but the switches and outlets are still the cream/beige color (don’t worry we are getting new ones to be white too), but it actually helps see and understand the true colors of these ‘white’ paints. I am personally not a fan of whites with yellow undertones which I see very strongly in Silos White. Itseems more yellow in person than in this photo. I love the color of shiplap but if you bring a darker color into a room with it (such as darker builtins which I plan to do in one of our spare rooms) it may make it feel too dark. These are only 3 swatches. I could probably do this forever and still not know if I have found the perfect color. I was also doing this during the pandemic and not a lot of places were shipping sample cans of paint.
I personally feel like Chantilly Lace is the best white because it is actually white, but not everyone wants that bright, crisp white feel. It also depends on the lighting and natural lighting in your house, the color of your floors, the color of your furniture, and more. Like I stated before, I did a lot of research on paint colors and that meant actually seeing it in homes from other bloggers and interior designers on their sites and Instagram accounts. I chose Chantilly Lace after seeing Studio McGee using it time and time again in their remodels.
I chose to test Silos White because the description and color swatch on Magnolia’s site looked to be what I wanted but after testing, it showed to be too different. I also chose Shiplap to test because all the reviews on the Magnolia site and bloggers all said how it was the perfect white for anywhere and everywhere in the house, but the in person swatch seems much more gray. So once again, how do we know what really is the best white? Thankfully Liz Marie from Liz Marie Blog did a lot more testing of white paints than I did and also has a great blog post with swatches on some of the most talked bout whites.
Photo via Liz Marie Blog – Top White Paint Colors
