Ok, confession time.  I chose the wrong white to paint the interior of my house.  Yes you read it correctly, I chose a very wrong white and my poor husband had to paint the whole interior of the house again.  That’s four coats the walls have had in the last couple of days.  I felt really terrible about it but he said “it was ok, we all make mistakes” ( husband of the year I think!).

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So here’s how the story goes…

The colour the walls were was Chalk USA ( Dulux ) as shown above.  This warm white was a little bit to yellow for me and I wanted to brighten up the place a bit.  The back half of the house faces south and the front north.  The colour I chose incorrectly was White on White (Dulux).  White On White is a cool white with grey/blue base tones.  I really thought it would be OK.  As the south facing room got painted it looked fantastic, but in the morning, the north facing room looked blue.  Like a powder/baby blue, it was terrible.

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Here is a chart from Dulux showing the variance on the colour white.  As you can see some of the whites are warmer like Chalk USA, Magnolia, and some of the whites are cooler, like  White On White and Peplum.   Light plays a huge factor into how the white will appear and feel in your home.

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So you are probably wondering what white I went with?  Well, after several sample pots later I chose Natural White also by Dulux.  It is the brightest white in the warm whites.  I am so pleased with the way it turned out.  As seen above ( excuse lazy teenagers on the couch) it is a bright white with the tiniest amount of warmth in it.  Perfect for my place.

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Here is another  picture of my dining room looking into the study/toy room before I had my new chairs.

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This picture courtesy of House Nerd shows how warm Natural White can be and how it can look completely different in other peoples homes.

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So I thought I would give some tips to help prevent you guys making the same mistake as me.

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My three tips for choosing the right white are:

1. Get Sample Pots, and lots of them.

2. Paint in different parts of your house, north facing, south, east and west facing.

3. View the samples in the morning, mid afternoon and evening before you make your decision.

I know now I should have grabbed a White On White sample pot but at least I know in the future to use them.  White can be one of the trickiest colours to get right.

Have you had a painting disaster lately?

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