A couple of months ago (how has it been that long already?) I wrote a post about choosing interior paint colors for our new home.
All those vertical paint samples above were the contenders, with the top white stripe being the trim color (SW Alabaster) and the green stripe being the kitchen cabinet color (SW Herbal Wash, but I later changed it to something even bolder).
In the end, Sherwin Williams Shoji White was the winner. I liked that it was white without being too blinding, and it was greige enough to give a little definition between the walls and trim. Funny thing is that this is the same color we chose for the exterior…this color is just that good (and it looks much whiter in the bright sunlight).
So Adam and his trusty paint sprayer got to painting, and….it’s white. Like, really white.
I knew it was going to look white, but still…it caught me off guard a little. My reaction was less of a “Yay, look how bright and neutral it is!” and more of an “Oh crap….my house is white” kinda reaction.
I do love how bright and neutral it is though, and it is what I wanted. I’m tired of trying to decorate around the color on my walls and not having any fun with the furniture and accessories. And looking at these big blank walls makes me pretty dang excited about furniture and accessories, I can’t lie.
So while it looks overly white to me right now, I keep reminding myself that we still have to add the beams and metal ceiling in the living room, the planked wall behind the fireplace, a wood ceiling in the kitchen, industrial metal railing, green cabinets and, of course, furniture and decor. It’s not going to be a big white box forever. It’ll be good.
We painted the kids bedrooms the same color, for now. I’m sure in the future they will get painted again when I get around to decorating, but for now they are super neutral as well.
We’ve started adding trim in the bedrooms (SW Alabaster), here you can see that there is a bit of definition between the trim and wall colors.
I did pick a second wall color, the office nook (in the living room), guest bath, master bathroom and bedroom are all painted Sherwin Williams Silvermist.
I love this color, there was no second guessing this one. I especially like how it looks with the stone.
(The bedroom still needs another coat…we’ll get there).
You could probably describe the color as a blue-gray, but that’s boring and not exactly true….I would describe is as more of a smoky aqua. Check it out in the bathroom (I swear it’s the same color!).
So that’s the update. This weekend Adam and his dad are installing kitchen cabinets and I can’t wait to see those babies in place!
Remind me again what your flooring is everywhere. The paint looks beautiful. Neutral is never a bad choice!
The flooring is just the concrete foundation, for now. In the future (like years from now) we will put down wood flooring, but it’s expensive and not necessary to close on our construction loan. We do need “flooring” to close though, but we figured out that sealed concrete counts as flooring…so we scraped, cleaned, and sealed it with an oil based sealer. And much to my surprise, it actually looks pretty good.
Things are coming along! I love the Silvermist. Like you, I’m not as sure about the Shoji white, but it will look different when all your things as well as the other architectural elements are in place. It definitely is bright and clean! Lovely.
It DOES look really white right now, but I’m sure it’s gonna look FABULOUS when it all comes together! I just discovered your blog & I’m planning on going back to the beginning of your house planning/building journey so I can soak up as much help as I can get…we’ve been working on the plans for our Last Forever Home & we’re closing in on the deadline for making any changes, etc. I don’t think our builder would build anything “wrong”, but I’m not sure how creative he is either. I “drew” up these plans in a software program & I’m petrified that we’re gonna build a “bad” house : ( At this point, I’m having trouble figuring out WHEN the FUN part is gonna start!
I’ll let you know when the fun part starts, haha. No, the whole process is fun, it’s just more stressful and all encompassing than I ever imagined. But I feel you in being terrified of building a bad house, I had the same fear. Luckily we had the advantage of having our friends build first, which was a huge stress reliever. Actually, if you’re new you have no idea what I’m talking about, but you can read about it here — https://wildfireinteriors.com/2015/11/darin-and-jodys-house-its-our-house-but-different/
I personally love the white, I’ve gone from “paint everything ALL the colours” when we first moved in to now usually choosing white, or at least a very neutral light grey. I just find it makes everything else I choose in the room stand out more, and I love that. Love the smoky aqua in the bathroom with those tiles :)
Oh, and I am sooooo jealous of your paint sprayer and lack of things to cover while painting. It must be so satisfying to have such a well-painted house!!!!!
Glad to hear you went from “all the colors” to whites and love it, hopefully I will feel the same way! Painting with the sprayer was amazing (and exactly zero work for me), but it’s not perfect. All the blue needs another coat because my husband did it at night (before we had lights) trying to finish before the tile work started the next day. I’ll be doing all the second coat by hand. And the white, well…its white and we have dirty construction happening and grimy workers hands there all the time, so it looks pretty gross at this point. I’m thinking we will have to repaint it as well.
I love it!! Have you done a post of your trim?? I’m really interested in what you used??? Thanks!
I haven’t done a post on trim, but I will. It’s just finger-jointed pine 1X6 though, nothing fancy.
Do a blog post on using the paint sprayer!
I love the colors you chose! The project is coming along really well and I’m excited to see it finishing! Thanks for sharing :)
i just turned down shoji white for our loft townhome and your photos & other similar blogs helped me. for my eye in too many darker areas places it goes from white to yellow. so we are going with extra white (which is really white [it was the only option for all the trim] but has a grey tone next to a true white). our builder only does one color on ALL the walls so shoji would have also been on the ceiling – so basically unchangeable forever. not just because painting ceilings is no fun but because we have such high ceilings. couldnt take the risk lol. we can paint the trim a whiter white or maybe go black like our builder did in their model. it feels trendy but the doors did look luxe.