Paint Colours In My Home

This is one of my most asked questions on Instagram – what paint colour did I choose for my walls in the new home! I went with white throughout (it was easier to plan everything around that, also cheaper to go this route as our builder – like most – charge an additional fee for every added paint colour). I plan on adding in some darker tones this year (like in our powder room) but I’m so happy with the paint colour I chose for our walls!

The thing about white paints

(or any paint colour for that matter), is it all comes down to the lighting in your home. Which way your windows face completely determines if your home will have warm or cool tones in the sunlight. This was something that I struggled with in our last home. It was very cool toned throughout, despite having a literal wall of windows on the main floor. That’s because our windows faced west, so for half the day we had cool toned light streaming in, like shadowed light, until the late afternoon sun came in. The home builder had also chosen a cooler, crisp white paint for the walls and cabinet colour, so it was almost blue toned for most of the day.

All this to say, I took my paint choice very seriously in this house. My end goal with our new home was to make it cozy and bright but with a lot of warmth.

Our current builder uses Sherwin Williams paint, so I looked at SW paint just to make it easy on me. Trying to narrow down a white paint is hard enough! Because we have a lot of north facing windows, the light coming in throughout the day tends to be on the cooler ‘blue’ side. Going with a warmer, creamier paint colour would be perfect, because it would offset that cooler toned light and the paint wouldn’t look yellow-y or too warm at all.

Paint colours in my home…

On our walls, I chose Alabaster by Sherwin Williams. Depending on where you use it, it can be a little ‘creamy’ (not yellow per say, but definitely on the warmer side), however, in our home it’s perfection! For the trim I chose Pure White by Sherwin Williams. It compliments Alabaster perfectly.

Why didn’t I use Pure White throughout?

I was originally going to have it on our trim AND walls, I researched a TON and looked up so many homes online that used it throughout. It’s very popular (and for good reason, it’s a beautiful white with almost no undertones). I think it would have given me the same issue I had in our last house though, leaving it feeling very cold and sterile because of the direction my main windows are facing.

You can see Pure White on the trim here, and how it has a cooler look compared to Alabaster on our walls. If you imagine how the trim looks and having that on the walls too, you can see what I mean by being cooler in my home. When I took this photo it was in the morning, so the window you see to the right, has warm east facing light, and there is a bank of windows to the left of this photo (our main windows) that are north facing.

^^ east facing windows that receive all the pretty morning sunshine

^^ north facing main windows in the dining room

The photos above are all unedited, I wanted you to be able to see the true colour on our walls and with the lighting I have.

I used Alabaster on all the walls in our home, including the basement and upstairs. I love it so much and I’m so happy with my decision. If you have any questions about the paint colours, let me know below! Thanks for reading!

xx Megan

 

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