Opinions on Best Bright White Paint?
I have to paint a rather dark attic. It has a window on one side and door on the other so there is some light on a sunny day but mostly it is lit by bulb. I would like some recommendations on a good white paint that reflects light well but is not too shiny…
I have to paint a rather dark attic. It has a window on one side and door on the other so there is some light on a sunny day but mostly it is lit by bulb. I would like some recommendations on a good white paint that reflects light well but is not too shiny or harsh. I want a flat white but not an spanish white for instance. Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks …
Use paint with an eggshell or satin finish. They’re not reflective, but give surfaces a richer, warmer feel, imho.
I do not recommend Behr. It has a lot of clay and not much pigment, and will look dingy quickly. I have had the best results with Benjamin Moore and Farrow & Ball.
what are you using this room for? storage?
if so, I second the vote on Behr ultra pure white.
if you’re in this room at all as a living space (office? yoga? nursery?), I’d suggest adding some lighting and a more saturated color of paint. Maybe not as dark as Frudo’s link… but as dark as the background color of this wall could look very nice
http://community.apartmenttherapy.com/contests/color/2010/entries/407
Just dont pick anything with blue or gray undertones, especially if you use CFLs. Use a white that’s slightly yellow or pinkish in tone. I personally love the color of cream (the real-life color). Benjamin Moore has a color called Powder Sand that reminds me of the color of real-life cream. It looks simply “white” to anybody who isn’t focused on these things!
Look at the info on the paint’s reflectivity. Unless the space is very well-finished, I’d suggest going with some color rather than just white. I lived in this pretty dark attic in college and I painted it with a high reflectivity paint with pinkish undertones. It ended up really making it seem brighter and warming the space up.
I suggest Behr Ultra Pure White. I have used this color for the trim and doors on my current house and it looks very bright white. One other thing I love about Behr is how easy it is to find. Just walk in, pick it up off the shelf and you are done, no waiting for it to be mixed.
http://blogs.hire-a-contractor-now.com/category/painting/ helps me lot on getting more painting information. Right now I am in the process of building a new house and it looks like I will be having 3″ plain moulding and I am planning to use the same white for it.
After 15 years of “landlord beige” in rental apartments, I painted my first coop Benjamin Moore’s Snowfall White and loved it.
This is a good blog post about white paint by Mark Chamberlain, who’s posts on apartmenttherapy are some of the more informative ones:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/color-therapy/choosing-the-right-white-take-two-colortherapy-126366
That being said, white can look kind of drab in a dark room. Perhaps embrace the darkness and go with a darker color? For example:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/bedroom/roundup-dark-bedrooms–075018