...is over I think.

The piano room at our old house was painted Navajo White and I loved it.

The guest rooms in the new house are (were) a pretty dark/drab color, so we were pretty convinced that we were going to paint those rooms Navajo White.

Mr SK finished priming them and was just going to go buy the paint, but I convinced him to start with a sample. And thank goodness I did because it looks so different, and we don’t lido it in this room at all! Could it be that it’s not the same color? That’s hard to believe, since it’s from the same company (Sherwin Williams). It must be something about the room. Different flooring, fewer windows, different millwork.

Whatever it is, we don’t like it.

Here’s Navajo white in the old house:



And here are the samples in the guest bedroom at the new house. The top right is Navajo white. The bottom left is called Creamy.



The top left color is the paint the previous owners used in the living btw.

I think we’re going to go with Creamy, at least for the room that I’m going to use for my home office. But I’m worried that it might be too white, too bright for the actual guest room . . .

I think choosing paint colors is the hardest part!!!

Check out Maria Killam on instagram. She is kind of annoying, but her information about figuring out what the undertone is in your hard finishes and how to use that to pick a white is absolutely fantastic. That could be why you don’t love it in your new home when you loved it in your old home!

My favorite white is called "ice cream". It is a light and bright color much like vanilla ice cream.
yummy

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Maria Killam on instagram

Thanks, I found her website (I don’t get how to use instagram as a place to get info…)

Ugh, the first thing I saw is her saying paint colors should be chosen last.

We wanna paint now, when the whole house is empty…

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Originally posted by CHAS:
My favorite white is called "ice cream". It is a light and bright color much like vanilla ice cream.
yummy

You’re making me want ice cream…

If you're still looking at paint chips, v the one we used is called "relaxed khaki," in 25%. Not Latte, as I thought it was. It's a beige with a green undertone, but when you tone down the pigment it becomes a neutral light beige that becomes almost white in direct sun.

Maybe something like that would work for you? (BTW, brilliant to test it out with some actual paint on your wall.)

Nina, we’re going to the paint store (again) today, so we’ll check it out.

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BTW, brilliant to test it out with some actual paint on your wall.)

Thanks! Maybe we got the idea from Steve actually, back in 2019 when we painted our old house. Since Mr. SK is going to paint anyway, his method is to do all the prep (paint-brush primer part, paint roller primer) and then paint on the sample colors.

Now they sell these peel and stick paint samples (at least Sherwin Williams does). They’re like $4 per sample (maybe if you buy so many the prices changes, I don’t remember). They’re 8” x 8”. We decided not to use those, partly because I always thought the paint chips (i.e. the color on paper) was sort of hard to get a sense of.

But if someone was trying to choose paint colors and didn’t want to deal with all the prep, the peel and stick samples would be an easy option.

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

quote:

Maria Killam on instagram

Thanks, I found her website (I don’t get how to use instagram as a place to get info…)

Ugh, the first thing I saw is her saying paint colors should be chosen last.

We wanna paint now, when the whole house is empty…

What she says makes a lot of sense. What's in the room will influence what the paint on the wall looks like.

We had Navajo White in several rooms on the first floor of our house many years ago. It was really popular at the time, but I found it to be a bit too yellow.

We eventually switched the living room and dining room to a Ben Moore color called White Coffee. We wanted to paint another room in it a few years back but couldn't find the color on their charts, but when our painter went into the store the paint mixologist was able to find it in some alternate reference material and mixed it up for us. I love it, but it's much darker than what you're looking at.

We have Cayman Islands all over the place upstairs and in the hallways. I'm tempted to repaint with White Coffee but all our walls are in pristine condition despite the fact that they haven't been painted in years. I don't feel like another project, so we'll just live with it.

We've also used Bar Harbor Beige, also darker than your usual color palette. But it works in our house. And our entire vacation home was painted in Sherwin Williams Dover White. Really brightened up a house that is naturally dark because it's in the middle of a cedar forest. But I've come to prefer paints that have a bit more depth, so probably not one I'd use these days.

I hate selecting paint color, which is why we've just stuck with what we have for so many years...

I know you're using SW paint, but Benjamin Moore has a nice feature on its site that shows you other colors that work with the one you're considering. It helps me, the color incompetent, get an idea of what the color might look like with what I have. The swatches are much bigger than what SW shows on theirs.

Here's the Navajo White page. Scroll to the bottom:

https://www.benjaminmoore.com/...r/oc-95/navajo-white

Creamy:

https://www.benjaminmoore.com/...or/oc-7/creamy-white

Hmmm...I noticed that on the SW page for Navajo White, Creamy is shown as a Coordinating Color...

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What she says makes a lot of sense. What's in the room will influence what the paint on the wall looks like.

I don't disagree! But it's not going to happen. We're going to paint before we move in.

That's what we did at our old house and it worked out really well (IMO, an interior decorator might disagree).

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We had Navajo White in several rooms on the first floor of our house many years ago. It was really popular at the time, but I found it to be a bit too yellow.

I can see that. We don't want yellow, and in our old house, I think Navajo White didn't "read" yellow because all of the trim, crown molding and baseboards were white. And probably because of all the glorious windows.

In the new house, the Navajo White "reads" almost brown to me. And I think that's because of the brown trim, brown doors, and fewer windows.

I'll check out that BM page, thanks!

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I noticed that on the SW page for Navajo White, Creamy is shown as a Coordinating Color...

That makes sense to me.

The question is, will we end up thinking that Creamy is too yellow...

We're going to work on the color selection again today. We'll see how it goes!

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In the new house, the Navajo White "reads" almost brown to me. And I think that's because of the brown trim, brown doors, and fewer windows.

BTW I am reminded of Steve telling me (back in 2019) that Navajo White really picks up the colors of what's around it. I don't know if it does that more than other colors, but I wouldn't be surprised.

You can ask the people at the SW store to print out the tint formula for various paints. It shows what tints, in what proportions, are in a particular color. It's the label they slap on the top of the can. At least that's what the BM store does.

It can help to see that maybe there's a lot of Black, or Red, or Whatever in a paint that might be causing the effect that you see, whether you like it or not.

Just another tool...