While free time has been a bit scarce these last few months, I do find time to research stuff that I want in my home. Being fairly minimalist, I appreciate the functional design of things. So when I say ‘material,’ I’m mostly talking about the flooring, wood, tile and colors that might go into finishing the interior of the house. Yes, this all might be premature, given I still don’t have plan approval or even a tight construction cost estimate, but I figure any research will eventually find its way into whatever my last home ends up being. Also, I find the research fun and moving closer to my end goal. So here is a story in three or four parts…
I consider wall color to be the most important starting point. It’s the largest canvas in any room and helps set the mood as you walk into a space. I also like pops or accents of color as opposed to large areas, so I don’t think there is any doubt that white – being the brightest, cleanest color that also makes a room look larger – is the best starting point. But there are so many ways you can go with white (Benjamin Moore offers more than 150 shades of white), where to start?
White can make a room feel sterile or cold, so for me, going with a warmer white is important. Also with wood being used for the exposed beams, flooring, cabinets and window trim – a warmer white will help blend with those natural tones. Viewing a color in the space throughout a day is important since even a simple white can look dramatically different depending on lighting, so this is all guess work at this point. But of the color chips I’ve collected, I’m going to base my initial color choice on Simply White. On a geeky side note, I’m a huge Benjamin Moore fan based on decades of painting all the walls of my homes. I think they offer the best application, coverage and durability for the money. The color names however, can be deceiving. You’d think something like Super White or Ultra White would be the brightest white, but actually Chantilly Lace is. You really have to look at the Light Reflectance Value (LRV), which is the percentage of light reflected by a color. A LVR of 100 would be pure white. Super White has an LRV of 89.09 while Chantilly Lace is 92.2. With an LRV of 91.7, Simply White is pretty bright, but I like the very slight yellow tone over the more grayish or neutral tones of the others. These variations in white are called undertones, and although Chantilly Lace and Super White probably have the least amount of undertone, I want that tone to help compliment the other materials.
Below are some rooms with Simply White applied from the Benjamin Moore website. As I go through other materials as part of this series, I’ll start to build a mood board of all the colors, patterns and materials to better see how everything lives together. Lastly, this is a digital medium, but its critically important to collect actual samples – which is what I’ve been doing. I can go on about the different color gamuts of additive versus subtractive colors – but to put it simply – digital is not always a realistic representation and introduces a host of other factors that will make things look different from screen to screen.
Next up, woods, stains and finishes – and if you thought I could go on about white – wood is more my passion.