Finding The Right White Paint If You Have White Furniture

I have been asked a gazillion times what color is the white paint in my new home.  It is Swiss Coffee.   This is what the former owners painted the entire house when they put it up for sale.  I love the color, it has sort of a creamy undertone and works beautifully in my home.  Everything is painted this color, walls, ceilings, and woodwork.  Whites are hard and even harder if you have white furniture.  Depending on the fabric on your furniture, white can be a real challenge.

This post has been updated to show current rooms and colors.

I have a white sofa and chair in my living room.  The chair has a slight gray undertone, and the sofa has a beige undertone.  The sofa is one I’ve had for years and is a cut velvet.  It is a piece I would like to replace, but since this was a custom sofa with down cushions and is the most comfortable thing in all the world, it probably isn’t going to happen any time soon.  It is in perfect shape, so not at the top of my list.

The point I am trying to make is how fabric whites can look against paint color whites.  Swiss Coffee paint has just enough various undertones that both my chair and sofa look good.

That is not always the case.

In our last house, I painted almost every room SW Reliable White.  It was just white enough to make every room light up, but not be stark.  It had a really soft creamy undertone to it and I loved it.   It looked amazing except with my living room sofa.  That brought me to the place where I had to rethink the color of my living room.

When You Have The Wrong White – Think Outside The Box

(This is the post I did back then to show the wrong color)

My sofa is a cut velvet pattern.  The velvet is white, but the background is an off-white or pale beige.  Overall the sofa reads white until you put the wrong white with it.

Once the walls were painted Reliable White the sofa looked yellow or beige.  Reliable white does not have a gray tone, but next to my sofa it does, so this was totally the wrong color for this sofa wall.

I originally had the walls painted a soft camel color (Fioli Antique Lace), so I went back to the paint store and had them mix that same camel color 1/4 lighter and painted just this one wall that the sofa was on.  See, now my sofa looks like its true color – white

No one ever noticed that one wall painted a different color than the rest of the house.

My current family room sofa has a slightly creamy undertone.  We have two grey leather recliners next to the sofa.  The Swiss Coffee paint color seems to play nice with both of them.

So when you are trying to pick the right paint color, be sure to check out how the light in the room affects your colors.  It can change your furniture color drastically.  Most importantly pay attention to the undertones of your furniture upholstery.  Creamy, white, grey or yellow undertones all look different with different colors of white paint.  In my home, Swiss Coffee and how much light we get makes all of those shades of white work.