One of the most common questions I’ve been getting lately on social media is, “what paint color is that?” I have a few favorite shades, so I wanted to put together a blog post that would be a resource for those of you looking for warm white shades!
In the past, I painted our entire Orange County townhouse in Benjamin Moore Cloud White. It was a great shade, and we loved it. Our new home in Georgia already had Benjamin Moore White Dove in the den and on the kitchen cabinetry, so we extended that into the kitchen walls, breakfast room, powder room, hallway and living room.
Our current home (sneak peek photos here) is painted in flat paint, which means it really shows every. Single. Scuff. We are sticking with flat to touch up, however I would not recommend painting with flat paint. Eggshell is going to be so much more forgiving of marks! We need to repaint every bathroom because they are covered in water marks… and if it was eggshell you probably wouldn’t even see anything. But we will be repainting with eggshell paint that will hopefully be more forgiving!
Upstairs, the nursery, guest bedroom and my office were already Benjamin Moore Ballet White, so I just touched it up. I’m including a few more white shades I really like, including some by Behr. We’ll be painting our exterior brick white as well, so I’m on the hunt for exterior shades!
If you want to see rooms in these shades, simply google search the name of the paint and tons of Google images will pop up giving you an idea. My favorite way to test shades? Buy sample and test them on your own walls. You can see how they look with the natural lighting of your space, which is super helpful.
I hope this helped answer some of your questions about white paint and if you have a favorite shade that isn’t listed here, please let me know in the comments! Thanks so much for reading –
Love this post! We recently bought our first home too and are in the process of painting! We loved using Samplize — they are large painted stick-ons that you can order and stick on your walls to test different paint shades! They’re actually hand painted and you can move them around, so it was great for us since we had quite a few shades we wanted to test but didn’t want to buy sample cans of each and have permanent swatches on the wall while we made our choice. Oyster white ended up being our exterior brick choice — it was the perfect warm white without brown or yellow undertones! Love following along on yalls journey! You inspired me to change out our guest bath hardware — WHAT a difference! Will definitely hold me over until we can do a full remodel.
I’ve never heard of this – thank you for the rec! And I’m going to look into Oyster White!
We’ve been through the flat vs eggshell thing too. I found that eggshell is way less forgiving when touching up. With flat, I can just paint big areas (hey scuffs) and you can’t tell. I can always tell with eggshell! I go through this dilemma everytime I go to paint now. Do I want forgiving on scuffs or forgiving on touch up?
Interesting! Flat has been pretty easy to touch up but there are just marks EVERYWHERE. Very interesting feedback though!
For the exterior paint, check out Young House Love’s masonry paint line- it’s fabulous! They recently repainted their brick home and it’s gorgeous! Can’t wait to see what you do with it!
Thank you for this recommendation!
I have been pondering all weekend what colors to repaint my house with, and then I thought why not white?? Its perfect! And then this is in my email today, you’re reading minds now!!! THANK YOU!
I love white paint!!! I was inspired to paint a few pieces with the Annie Sloan chalk paint you suggested!! Did you get post the after pictures of your grandmother’s dresser?? Dying to see how it came out! #teamrinna
Well about that… it ended up crackling which was not the goal. So now I’m not sure what we will do next!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Benjamin Moore Paper White. It’s white with a very slight gray hue! It’s in most of my house!
Oh also I meant to add the builder painted my new house in SW Shoji White and it’s a beautiful warm white that looks lovely with bright white trim. I recommend it if anyone wants to go the SW route!
We just painted our whole house a flat white but used the Sherwin Williams emerald paint that allows you to have the flat look but you can wash it! The first week the kids put their dirty feet on the playroom wall and it came right off with soap and water!