So you want to paint a room white. Sounds easy, until you go to the hardware store to buy paint and discover there are dozens of whites to choose from.
Many have familiar yet poetic names that conjure up ever-so-slightly different hues: cream, pearl, vanilla, snow, chalk, ivory, jasmine, bone. But the closer you look, the more confusing the choices are. You want a plain, basic white, but the purest white on the color chart looks a little harsh next to all those soft shades with just a hint of something else: beige, gray, peach, rose, yellow or the palest-ever blue or green.
Often people default to white because they don’t want strong colors in their home. But as it turns out, “it’s harder to choose white than any other color,” said Sharon Grech, a color design expert at Benjamin Moore Paints.
She says Benjamin Moore alone offers more than 150 whites, and “when people are choosing white, I see more people unhappy or making a mistake or being shocked at the color than when they choose other colors.”