In Search of the Perfect Antique White
July 12th, 2007 by ariana
Yesterday the floor guy put the final coat of poly on, officially marking the end of the floor drama!
We also finished painting the master bedroom, Benjamin Moore Silver Sage, a lovely color and the first one in the whole house that I actually liked right away:
I’m happy to report that the floor guy’s second attempt at patching the unsightly holes in the middle bedroom/office was a vast improvement on the first attempt:
New Floor Patch in Middle Bedroom / Office
All in all I’m quite happy with the result of our resurrection of the original hardwood floors, for all the fighting, missteps and flaws, its a dramatic improvement of the overall aesthetic and was well worth it!
My next challenge, and the one I hope you can help me with is my search for the perfect trim color.. .
I’m trying to match the existing color which is a grey-ish white with a hint of cream (and is in all likleyhood not a real color, but rather years of dirt & grime built up on the original color.) But I love its softness, all colors I’ve tried look too prefab and new.
So far I’ve tried BM Dove white (WAY too bright white)
BM Dove White mixed with China White (too “Putty”)
BM Antique White: too orange and lastly
BM Acadia White: Not grey/dark enough.
If you’ve found the perfect antiquey non-bright trim color, please help a girl out!
Try BM Decorator White in semi gloss is a nice off white,
It’s BEAUTIFUL!!
Thanks Kristen!
Gail, Decorator’s White is even lighter that White Dove which is too white for me :(
I’m not much help in the off-white dept. (I’m a bright white girl these days) but I think your floors look lovely and I like the color you chose. It looks very sophisticated and restful for a bedroom. Nice job!
We’re using BM White Chocolate and love it, but I don’t know that it has enough gray for you if that is what you are looking for (we wanted a slightly creamy white).
If you love the color of the trim as it is, and you have a piece of trim you can temporarily remove from somewhere in the room (like inside a closet or something like that) you can just take it with you to Benjamin Moore and have them create a custom mix for you which will match it.(Most paint stores do not charge extra for creating a custom mix and will provide you with the “recipe” they used so they can mix more for you in the future.)
If there’s no way to remove a piece of trim without damaging it, you can also also try scraping a piece of paint off the trim (you’ll want a piece at least the size of a quarter, and again, you’ll want to do this in a fairly unnoticable part of the room.) Just bring the scraping to the paint store and they can do the match from that as well.
The floors look great! No more black spots! :-)
Thanks Pink!
@Stephanie, there’s no trim in the closet I don’t think..I good idea about brining in a chip! I actually got a free BM color wheel today that the paint store gave me, well, actually encouraged me to steal… So that may help alot.
I also think part of my problem is that the age of the current trim paint has lots of different colors in it, sort of like a stain effect which also looks softer than one solid color?
I bought a quart of “Floral White” that I hope will be the one!
Jennifer, I don’t have my new color wheel in front of me, but White Chocolate looks (and sounds!) scrumptious when I looked it up at http://www.colorcharts.org.. but you know how computer screens can be deceiving.
I’ll definitely take a look at it later, thanks!
I suggest Swiss Coffee by Dunn Edwards.
Martha Stewart also has a great soft, antique white color but I can’t recall the name of it. It’s part of Martha’s Fine Paints Color Collection offered through Fine Paints of Europe.
Best of luck!
Take a look at SW “Navajo White”. It has worked out perfectly for us! I also use Kelly-Moore Antique white regularly, but it is more cream than I think you want.
Good luck….your floors and wall color are beautiful!