Out of all of the rooms that I have painted in my lifetime, never did I realize how complex this process can be! When we moved into our home 4 years ago, we knew that it needed some TLC. Even though the previous owners had an interior designer help them with the décor of the home, there were just some tastes that were not for us. I mean, HELLO aqua venetian plaster in the master bath!!! It took two years of being nauseated every time I walked into my bathroom before I took a gallon of Kilz and a paintbrush to those walls! It was so taste specific and gross that I had no problems covering up a job that I know cost thousands to apply! This is where our dilemma started. The pretty white that I chose to paint these walls did not coordinate with our floors and trim (insert face palm)! I mean, I don’t even have a before photo of this room because it was THAT. BAD!
When we first started painting our bathroom, I chose a popular white color that didn’t coordinate with our almost 10 year old off white trim and brown-ish tiles and features. Since, I have been staring at those walls trying to figure out where I needed to go next. Thankfully, I have located a pretty creamy white (or possible a blush white) that will coordinate and I will be tackling this project, next!
Okay, so lets talk the technicality of paints… did you know that all paint colors have undertones? I myself happen to be sensitive to purple undertones. I would look at the dark greige on my walls and see the purple shades… If you know me, you know that purple is one of my least favorite colors (I blame my mama for this one). So, it just bothered me. But this is not totally why we repainted these walls. See, in 2012-2013 -ish, Benjamin Moore reformulated their pearl finish paint and guess what is on my walls?! You betcha! We had walls that we couldn’t touch up, with 4 boys, that was not an option. I had so many little white dings that stood out like a sore thumb and It drove me batty!
Lets talk LRV! So aside from undertones you have a paint’s LIGHT REFLECTING VALUE. On a scale from 1-100, the LRV tells you how much light will be reflected in your room. 1 being super dark and 100 being bright. I knew that I wanted our main living area to have a LRV of at least 65 because our space is lacking in recessed lights and adequate light fixtures, but that is a “whole nother” post, y’all! Plus, our previous paint color was in the mid 50 range so I knew based on that, we needed a color with a higher LRV!
For instance, my breakfast nook and dining area went from an LRV in the mid 50s to an LRV of 78! They now look fresh and crisp and tie in perfectly with my kitchen. We went with Benjamin Moore Navajo White, mostly because that’s the color of our kitchen, but this is where I actually started researching all of this. Our trim in our home is Sherwin Williams Navajo White which is a creamy, yellowish color with yellow and brown undertones. Remember our Master Bath, the trim totally clashed with the BM White Dove that I attempted to paint it. I’ve figured out that yellow and purple undertones look best on the walls within our home.
That being said, I used Kylie M Interiors website to cross reference every greige color that Pinterest suggested. This cut down the amount of sample cans that we purchased. We narrowed it down from 5 to our top 2 in TEN MINUTES! We were torn between BM Classic Gray with a LRV of 75 with passive purple undertones. Passive means that the undertone is livable and very unnoticeable, if anything it should reflect the tiniest bit of pink. Our second is BM Edgecomb Gray with an LRV of 63 and its a greige that pulls a little more on the beige side. While Edgecomb Gray is what we would normally lean towards, we have gorgeous custom burlap curtains that I want to pop in our living space, so we were so torn!
Ultimately, we chose BM Edgecomb Gray and we have lived with it for the last four months and I love it just as much now as when it first started going up on our main walls! It is the perfect traditional creamy shade and compliments our brown tones throughout our home while still giving it a much needed update and brighter look. We did break up the monotony by painting our breakfast area, kitchen and dining room BM Navajo White and we could not be any happier! Now off to the next projects! Re-painting our master bath and a powder bath remodel!
I hope this blog helps you on your journey to finding the perfect paint color! I have since used these tips to pick out colors for our other rooms and I cannot wait for those big reveals!
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