The Fate of My Dear Friend

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon and I’m up to my eyeballs in cute new boots on my favourite online store when I hear a smothered chime letting me know there’s a text waiting for my attention. I waffle with the decision to get up from my shopping daydream to dive into the black abyss (aka my purse) to check the text.  Little did I know that the life of my good friend hung in the balance…

“Hey, I’m at the paint store and I’m going to pick a colour for my downstairs. What’s your favourite white right now?’

Breathe in and breathe out and wait for the rush of blood to my head to slow. Steady my hand. Calmly enter the letters S-T-O-P on iPhone and reply to cute (but desperately naive) friend.

“Back away from the order desk.” I sputtered, “You can’t pick a white from a paint store!” 

You can’t know a white before it’s in your home, basking in the glow from your chosen lighting fixtures, wrapped in the reflections from your red oak floors and slate backsplash…

Fifty Shades, and None of Them Are White

When we’re talking paint, there’s no true white. Every shade has some bias to it, and that’s ok. The trick is in making the biases work in your favour. The shade doesn’t have to be shockingly blanched, but if it’s a carefully chosen hue, even if it’s a gentle grey or cream, if it’s the most pale  hue in your colour palette it can act like a white, brightening your space and enhancing the design features you decorate with, without being cold or shocking.

I’m a huge fan of white walls, and I love all fifty shades. Walls are, well, kind of boring. There are many more interesting things to showcase like furniture, art, collections, wallpaper, and the list goes on.. Whiting out your walls works like taking a big booming voice out of the choir so that other more delicate, interesting voices can be heard and enjoyed. It acts like the canvas, and your home, the pieces of decor you choose to represent your life, becomes the art.

But choose wisely. The wrong shade is like the white hot kiss of death. It can suck the life from your scene, bring an eerie chill to your home, or smother your good intentions with a fluffy pillow full of blah.

An Eye For Colour

We experience colour a lot like how we experience taste. The tongue measures a taste sensation in four ways: sweet, sour, bitter and salty. When we take in a scene, our visual nerves act like our taste buds, measuring what we see in three ways: the measure of green or red, the measure of blue or yellow, and the intensity or brightness of the colours.

Colour nerves in our eyes work by comparing opposites. On the colour spectrum red and green are opposites, as are yellow and blue, and we play them against each other to come to our conclusions. It isn’t like math, where two plus two equals four every time. Our eyes aren’t looking for hard facts; we’re using deductive reasoning to read a scene in an instant. And the scene, lets not forget, is shifting at the speed of the setting sun.

Think again about your taste buds and how easily you can manipulate them by simply brushing your teeth. The minty freshness can turn a sweet summer strawberry into a bitter, sour bomb in your mouth by simple comparison. The same happens to a colour when it’s placed in a new scene.

This optical illusion makes my point easier to grasp:

The brown (or is it yellow?) bits look entirely different depending on where they’re placed and who they’re sitting beside.When you are looking for the perfect colour for your wall, you have to look for the colour that is perfect in your space, not what looks good in the paint store, and not even in your cute little mind.

A colour is not a particular combination of pigments and bonding agents poured into a bucket. That’s paint. Colour is what happens when those agents react with your space. Bottom line – there is no such thing as a universal answer for the perfect white. But if you’re choosing a white that will play a substantial role in the overall scope of your space, then I advise you to take it slow and do it right the first time. I have seen people rush the process, spend thousands to have a home professionally painted, only to call and request my help to get it right a year later. If I’m scaring you, I apologize. But it’s for your own good.

Just keep reading and you’ll be fine…

Picking Like a Pro

Jonathon Adler designed this colourful space, with a perfectly crisp white to set off the spectrum of brights.

Here’s the insider scoop to help you pick like a pro:

1. Bring the whole wheel home.

If at all possible, take a colour wheel to the place you’re painting. This is the only way to really see how the colour will play in your space. Often a paint reseller will have extra wheels behind the desk that they’re willing to share.  If you’re embarking on a large project and will need to choose many colours, consider purchasing a wheel from the manufacturer.

The next best thing would be to take home a large selection of sample swatches. Remember, big box reno stores are often lit by fluorescent lights that manipulate the swatches as you look at them.

Here, Adler chooses a soothing mossy green to house the complex nature of the colour scheme.

Find the swatch you think you like, then choose a selection of swatches that range from cooler to warmer than your favourite. You might be surprised at how misguided your instincts can be when you’re seeing by fluorescent light. If you’re in a big box home improvement store, you can take the samples to the lighting section of the store. There should be a display where they show examples of different styles of bulbs. Look at your selection of swatches under the same kind of light that your space uses at home. Once you’re sure you’ve gathered the right kind of swatches, pick a few more for luck and head home.

2. Make a tool to isolate the colour swatch.

One of the most confusing aspects of choosing a colour from a paint swatch is that you’re often made to view it like a police line-up. The varied shades beside your swatch are entirely distracting and often very misleading. Cut a hole from the centre of a sheet of black paper and place it over the colour you’re looking at. This isolates the scene for your eyes and helps you to get a truer read on the depth and saturation of the shade.

This fresh canvas has a gentle undertone of creamy lemon, making it smooth and fresh all at once.

3. Look at the colour from every angle.

Take your swatch and place it on every wall in your space. The light from outside and the artificial fixtures affect different parts the room in different ways. Become familiar with your space and how the colour will play in every instance. For example, a room that has large windows overlooking a luscious yard will often be affected by shades of green reflecting in from outside. Make sure that you like (or at least can live with) the colour on every wall.

Where two colours butt up against each other, like where a wall meets the trim or the kitchen cabinets, the friction between the tones will be most intense, especially if those two tones are similar in depth. Make sure you’re happy with the look of your swatch when placed directly next to these permanent fixtures. (Consider flooring, baseboards and other trim, tiles, cabinets and countertops.)

4. Go big or go home.

The balance of grey and yellow in the undertones of this white make for an elegant, classic chic.

It’s a big deal to invest the time and money in painting a space, and one more step to ensure success isn’t a lot to ask. Right? But a typical approach to painting a sample wall is, well, dumb. Usually we pick a main wall and slap a bit of paint in the middle, make a police line up of the short list,  and hope that it reveals all. But that wall is as biased as the next, and you’ll be looking at the larger swatch of colour up against your old colour, which is entirely deceptive and, well, silly. I’d suggest you paint a large piece of cardboard with adequate coats. Move the sample around the room to see how it reacts with different sources of light and permanent fixtures. Again, make sure you come back at intervals during the day to watch the changing light. If this isn’t possible, or if you’re not totally anal retentive like me, then go ahead with the big splotches method and I’ll try not to say ‘I told you so’.

5. Watch the colour change with the sun.

This room proves that even with white walls, a scheme can have a dark and mysterious side.

You can’t choose a colour in an hour. Not safely, anyway. Once you’ve found a swatch you think will work, watch the painted sample for 24 hours. The sun changes its hue as it rises and falls in the sky, and its position in the sky also changes what it reflects off of. Finally, it fades altogether, leaving you with only the artificial sources of light. Make sure you enjoy the colour you’ve chosen at all times of the day and night.

6. Be prepared to compromise.

It’d be very rare to find a single colour that rocks your boat in every angle of your space all day long.

You’re not looking for perfection, but rather an overall feeling of success with no deal-breakers. In my experience there’s always a bit of compromise involved.

8. Don’t punish the paint.

A subtle creamy undertone makes the perfect landing places for sumptuous shades of brass and ochre.

Often people just don’t like change. Sometimes it isn’t the colour of the paint that’s the problem; it’s just that someone in the home (usually the husband) is hesitant to change. If you suspect this could be the case, don’t punish the paint. Be prepared to leave a sample board hanging around for a week or two before you can get a true read on its success. 

1721 Words Later

So it only took 1721 words, but you’re ready to pick a perfect shade like a pro! If you’re up for it, you can read about colours, the emotions they conjure and the tricks they play here.  If you’re still nervous, call us! We’re here to help, and picking paint colours is totally our thing.