My Paint Color Scheme: White and Soft Neutrals

Wow…this has been tough. Who knew there are SO many different shades of whites to choose from even just from one brand of paint! We are painting the exterior of our new home (under construction) as well as a good portion of the interior white and selecting the perfect shade of white has been a daunting task. Will it be too off-white? Too cool or stark? Too grey?

I decided the best way for me to determine the white that we needed and liked was to look at lots of pictures of the color I was wanting to use in context (and in different lights). I also plan to simply test out the paint on whatever surface we are intending to paint.

Fairly early on we decided to go with Sherwin Williams paints (as advised by our builder) so that we could still have high quality paint but not go too over budget. This automatically limited our color choices (which was a good thing) but there are many other great brands of paint out there for those that have time to sift through all those thousands of choices 🙂 There were so many beautiful whites and soft neutral colors to choose from that I gathered several samples together, took them home, and researched what they looked like used in homes from pictures online. If you didn’t already suspect it, I am seriously afraid to commit to color–and I just love the clean look of a neutral colored space with smaller pops of color. For some reason too much color becomes too busy for me.

Above is a collage of most of my paint colors for the new house–it’s a bit deceiving because our furnishings we already have will add color and make a big difference in the overall look of the space. I ended up going with Sherwin William’s “Pure White” and “Alabaster” for the interior trim and walls, respectively. I think they nice true whites–the Alabaster is a softer, creamier white and I liked that they didn’t present too cool or too warm for what I was going for. It looks like a lot of blue-greens in our house too but in reality we are only using these in small amounts–for cabinetry mostly and for the laundry room. Likewise, the pink, Sherwin Williams “Faint Coral,” will only be for the girls’ bedroom.

Below are some design boards I created using Olioboard (I love this online tool!) to envision what our furnishings might look like with the paint colors selected for a few of the rooms in our new house. Most of the items I chose for the boards are representative or inspirational rather than actual furnishings we have or plan to use.

Living Room:

Dining Room:

Master Bedroom:

Girls’ Bedroom:

My overall thought is that we will start with white (and neutrals) and as time goes on if we want, we will slowly move into more color as we live in the space. After all, it’s just paint!! And easily changed.