I suspect there are regionally popular color palates, but I encourage you to look at Sherwin Williams Navajo White. It’s pure white with a dollop of each of the tint colors.

What’s interesting about it is that the color changes depending on what it’s next to. It will look gray next to your black piano and warmer next to your natural wood piano. It looks different in the morning than it does in the afternoon. Somehow it picks up up blues and greens. If you check the picture it looks a little gray, which is picking up the tone in the floor.

It’s been over used around here, and some call it “Landlord White”. No matter, I use it in my house and other projects and it always works.

Mary Anna,

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Don't worry about whether the piano will look good. Pianos always look good.

Good point!

Steve, I will definitely check out Navajo White -- I'm pretty sure it was in the booklet we grabbed that has three sets of white (with then maybe 6-9 versions in each set -yikes!)

I'm wondering if we might decide it's not warm enough though. For example, if I did end up with a black piano and that brought out a blue or gray undertone in the wall color, that would probably be exactly what I don't want. Also, I bet it would be hard to predict that in advance, even if we painted a pretty big area with a paint sample.

I've been reading about white and the information about how it reacts to light and lighting have been super helpful. The living room faces east with two big windows and then there's one window on the north wall as well. So for the time of day when we would be likely to use the room the most, there won't be direct light into the room, although it probably won't be dark either.

But what I read was that white photographs really well and does really well with lighting, but if it's not as well lit, that's when it looks gray or dingy. So that's something to think out, and maybe we might go towards a more yellow-esque cream in order to keep a bright, warm look...

Anyway, I'll post back when we start making some decisions!

Thank you everyone for all the comments and suggestions!!

It can be really challenging to pick a color that achieves the look you want.

I think it's important to consider Steve's suggestion of getting samples and painting some large areas of multiple walls in each room. The color will change depending on time of day, and will be affected by the reflection from other large areas of color like the floor. Bring a cushion from a chair or two if you can.

We have a 5 x 8 master bath that we remodeled some years ago. I walked in after the painter was done and looked at the finished product. Even though I absolutely knew there was only one color of paint, I would have sworn that the room was painted in two different colors. The wall across from the window looked like one color, and the adjoining wall (across from the shower, which is a solid neutral not far off from the wall color) looked completely different. It was completely unexpected and spoke to how difficult it is to predict how something will look until it's up on the wall.

For this reason our house is incredibly boring and we've basically painted it all in Benjamin Moore's Cayman Islands. Our painter recommended it because it works with both browns/beiges and greys.

https://www.benjaminmoore.com/...an-islands?color=952

It looks completely different on our walls than it does on my screen.

Sherwin-Williams can mix any color paint if you tell them the color and who makes it; you don't have to buy Benjamin Moore paint.

Also helps to look at the formula for the color you choose. Knowing which pigments are in the color can be helpful.

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We have a 5 x 8 master bath that we remodeled some years ago. I walked in after the painter was done and looked at the finished product. Even though I absolutely knew there was only one color of paint, I would have sworn that the room was painted in two different colors. The wall across from the window looked like one color, and the adjoining wall (across from the shower, which is a solid neutral not far off from the wall color) looked completely different. It was completely unexpected and spoke to how difficult it is to predict how something will look until it's up on the wall.

Yeah, I'm kind of trying to prepare myself for this! To the extent that that's possible...

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Also helps to look at the formula for the color you choose. Knowing which pigments are in the color can be helpful.

Hopefully Mr. SK will be good at this... I don't know that "knowing which pigments" will even be meaningful to me, though we'll find out soon enough!

BTW that is a nice color, WTG.

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BTW that is a nice color, WTG

You know, based on what I see on my screen I would *never* choose it. It's so different from how it looks on the walls in our house. The screen color looks like a rosy beige, and it's much darker than it comes across in real life.

One thing I find helpful on the Benjamin Moore site (and it may be available for Sherwin Williams and other paint manufacturers) is the "goes with these colors" feature.

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You know, based on what I see on my screen I would *never* choose it. It's so different from how it looks on the walls in our house. The screen color looks like a rosy beige, and it's much darker than it comes across in real life.

Yeah, I'm taking anything I see online with a huge grain of salt! Mostly I'm looking at it in conjunction with other things in the photo. So for example in Steve's photo, you can see the wall color against the trim and the floor. And on both SW's site and BM's site, you can experiment with a demo photo of various rooms and swap out colors. And yes the "goes with" feature helps too.

I don't have good photos for our soon-to-be house yet. The listing photos has all their artwork on the wall and furniture and so on, so the photos are hard to use online. And the last time we were there, they were half moved out so I did take some photos of the walls etc. but the weather was absolutely horrible and they didn't have many lamps etc, so those photos really aren't proving to be useful.

Hopefully we can get some good photos next week, and then also get some paint samples etc....

But yes, anything in a photo or on a screen is not going to be the same as the real thing.

Sorry if this is a repeat (yes, I'm too lazy to go back and reread all the posts...)

When you've settled on a color or two, buy a small can of each and paint a large swatch in various areas of the rooms you want. Make sure you paint where sunlight hits, where it won't hit, and take a look at it in daylight and at night. The colors will definitely vary in their look. By that, I mean the same color will look different based on location and light. This isn't a bad thing at all, but it may help you decide. The paint you thought was too dark may be great on a large swatch in natural light, or vice-versa.

Also, if you do paint the ceilings, make sure you keep the ceilings several shades lighter than the walls, or just paint them white.

I lived in a Navajo White house for decades, btw. It reads as white, but if you hold a piece of paper next to it, you'll see it actually has some tint.

Nina, we will definitely do the test painting. The tricky part is settling on only two-ish options!

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It reads as white, but if you hold a piece of paper next to it, you'll see it actually has some tint.

Yes, if we go with a super light color, that "reads as white" will be what we want, and hopefully a white that works with a different-white on the trim...

We're not going to paint the ceilings. At least, we're not planning to. We need to do a more in-depth survey of all the rooms and all the ceilings first, of course.