We intended to have our house painted immediately after closing (before we moved in). It didn’t happen because picking paint colors without 24/7 access to the housewas just too difficult. I need to paint samples on various walls and sit around staring at them as I go about my life. It’s not like we were painting an accent wall or two that could easily be re-done. We painted everything… walls, ceiling, and trim. We ended up waiting until after we moved in. It was a huge headache since we had to wait to unpack non-essential items and move all furniture around a couple extra times. It cost a pretty penny since aside from the gallons and gallons of paint, there is a ton of prep work to get it done right. We opted to hire this out because it would literally take us years to paint the entire house (I know this from experience) and you can’t beat the finish you get from a professional spray job.
I originally picked Benjamin Moore’s “Muslin”. It seemed like the soft taupey-gray that I was looking for. Then, when I put it next to white trim colors instead of all of the floor to ceiling yellow (literally everything from the trim to the walls to the ceilings were painted 3 versions of yellow), it suddenly looked very brown in our house. Back to the drawing board.
Over 2-dozen paint samples later, I finally settled on a lesser-known Benjamin Moore color, “Fog Mist”, OC-31. It is only in the Off-White color chart, which I bought special for this decision. Many colors were too dark to paint on such vast, tall walls and complex ceilings. Because our ceilings have a lot of architecture to them (in other words, they go every which way), we painted the ceilings the same color as the walls to avoid the “what’s a wall and what’s a ceiling” issue. Colors that looked great in friend’s homes looked dark and bold in our house. The Benjamin Moore off-white chart is great for soft colors. Here it is in someone else’s home:
Source: The Brownstoner
Trim was an entirely separate issue. After I finally settled on the wall color, I painted large swatches in various places around the house. I then painted my top 4 “finalist” trim colors around the large swatch, one on each side. None were a bad pick. After I narrowed it down to 2, my mother came by to help me decide. Jason walked by trying to figure out what all of the fuss was about, still thinking that all 4 “finalists” were actually 1 color. He then went muttering down the hall… something about “100 kinds of white all over my house”. Benjamin Moore’s “Snowfall White”, OC-118 was the victor.
Fog Mist / OC-31 with Snowfall White OC-118
Then comes the wait for painting day week….