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31 Aug 2011

Shades of pale


 If you'd like to totally screw with yourself walk into any DIY store and stand in front of the rows and rows of tins of wall paint containing tiny variations of off-white and try and choose the one you like best. A Whisper of Stone, no, Parchment White, no, Lace Undergarment, ah what? Which one? WTF are we here for anyway? 

 Truth is, I like off-white, I painted my bedroom bright yellow when I was about 10 and then had to spend most of my teenage years in a dayglo hell. When I was a student I painted my bedroom a rasberry colour and lived in a perpetual half light for a year. Now I crave soft, delicate off-white walls on which to hang my prints and which make my home light, bright and beautiful. But the question is which off white do I go for? Hell, I'll even stray a shade darker than off-white if the colour is that perfect.


 However, that's not to say I don't like a sprinkling of colour here and there, in fact I love colour, I adore colour, it's just that I now know that, for me, colour looks so much better framed by an off-white background. OK, so I think you got it, I like my walls off-white.







All photos found via my Pinterest!
 By the way, the bloody walls are not even ready to paint yet, I just get a little ahead of myself sometimes.

7 comments:

  1. Lighter shades are almost always best. Although, I've lived in rentals for the past ~8 years, so I don't have much choice. I always have off-white walls :)

    That being said, when I was in 4th grade my parents let me paint my bedroom walls a neon-ish green. Not my best choice.

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  2. i love white rooms as well and picked up a colour chart of various whites and off whites at the hardware store and had no idea where to begin! they're all the same and yet i know that they're different!

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  3. Hi, nice post since Im an architect; I would think about the ceilings and the walls together, light bounces off better with white ceilings and a few shades darker walls; whether it be beige or off whites. I like whites that have a cold base to them, some whites have a hint of yellow or warm base. It also depends on the color of your floors, how the wall color matches the hues of the floor. I dont want to bore you, overall I would make sure the ceilings and wall mountings are white; that automatically brightens the room. If your going to hang white frames on the wall, an off white/creme color just makes those frames pop.cheers

    http://mini-lemon.blogspot.com

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  4. I absolutely love that last image. I want that to be my own personal play room. And I do like off-white but I HATE cream. Bleh. A crisp white or soft white is the way to go for sure.

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  5. really great post thanks for sharing!



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  6. Wow, pintojak, thank you so much for that advice! How great is the blog world for connecting with talented and knowledgeable people?
    Thanks to all the other lovely ladies too!
    X

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  7. My bedroom has been off-white since I was a kid. It's light on the eyes and makes me feel at peace. Everything else in my bedroom was a mix of pink and white. =)

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