Since the first time I watched Fixer Upper I have dreamed of an all white interior wall color. I couldn't wait to own a home to justify painting an entire house white, haha. I actually did careful research while we were in the process of buying our home and scoured pinterest for the right shade of white for the walls and trim in our home. I really wanted to have a farmhouse modern cottage feel to the colors that I picked. That's kind of a jumble for our little house, but I love all three of those styles and want to incorporate them as much as I can. I finally found a perfect combination that Lauren McBride used in her home. She used Benjamin Moore's Decorator's White on her walls and Chantilly lace on her trim. I went to Benjamin Moore's website to look at those colors and found that they have a preset rooms that you can view different colors in and see what they look like together. I found color I wanted to use on my doors that would go with both colors. I loved using this tool, but I did keep in mind that seeing a color on a computer screen would definitely be different than looking at it in person. So with my perfect colors floating around in my brain, I headed to my local paint store that carries Benjamin Moore to pick up swatches and samples. Upon arrival and looking fervently for the Decorator's White swatch, I could not find it anywhere. I also had two little boys in tow and really didn't want to spend a bunch of time asking about it and doing more research. So I quickly swooped up swatches of Chantilly Lace and my door color, Edgecomb Gray, and hunted for a white wall color. I ended up settling on Alabaster. It's definitely creamier and not a crisp white which I was hesitant about, but nonetheless I picked up samples of all three colors and brought them home. I immediately swatched them all throughout our house and fell in love. It was really hard to imagine the colors everywhere because we had yellow walls that made our floors more orange and that made it difficult to see my color vision. But Jonathan and I both agreed that we love the paint colors and I went and got all of the paint that we needed and supplies. This was in late November that I got them and it wasn't until early March after our trip to San Diego that I actually painted the rest of the house, haha. We were really busy in those between months and I was waiting for Jonathan to have some time to help me, but I realized he wouldn't and I couldn't stand to live in a yellow home and where our master bathroom was orange, ew. It took me four full days to actually paint the majority of our home. I still need to paint the back splash wall in our kitchen, the sunroom, and some more doors, but those are pretty easy projects that I will get done another day.
Here are some before and afters of some of the interior parts in our home.
Before:
The colors were yellow in the rest of the house, icky green in our master bedroom, and a creamsicle orange in our master bath.
After:
As you can see the colors I used really brightened up the space. I have found that the wall color will sometimes pull a little pink depending on the time of day, but I love having whiter walls. Especially since we are having more light throughout the day and it all just looks more cozy!
Now I wanted to talk about each color that I chose. We live in Connecticut, right off of the coast and I love the cottage style homes that are here. While we have more of a ranch style home, it has cottage features like shutters and a french gothic picket fence. I also love the farmhouse style and we actually live a fairly nice sized piece of land for the coast and wanted to pull inspiration from that. And lastly, Jonathan does love more of a modern look as far as hardware and finishing touches go. So with all of those styles in mind, I really wanted colors that could easily go with any of those styles.
Alabastar: Orignally I wanted Decorator's White which is a brighter white with a little touch of gray , but I am really glad that I chose Alabaster. It's a creamy, slightly off white but it gives the perfect warmth in our home. It actually makes our little home feel cozy and not overly bright, but when the sun hits the walls our house just light's up and I love it. For me this pairs perfectly for any cottage aspect that I want to use in our home.
Chantilly Lace: I have seen so many people use this as trim around their homes, and I understand why. It's the perfect white to compliment a wall color. It's not to stark, but it nicely accents the trim. We will be using this for our ceiling color when we repaint our ceiling down the line. I think this is a classic farmhouse color. It's a nice bright white that would go with any farmhouse look we bring into our home. We have already painted our faux shiplap ceiling this color and I am in love with it!
Edgecomb Gray: I really wanted something a little more greige for the doors. And this color fits beautifully with the other two. I actually have a similar color on our boys' play kitchen that I wanted to replicate in our home. I think this color ties in our modern touch in our home. I can image black door hardware on them and I instantly drool over the color combination.
All in all, I am so happy with the colors that I chose. I feel like they suite our home so well and I can't wait to see how it all looks together once our major renovations are done. Also update on the house! We are so close to finishing our great room, we have started putting up new fencing for our backyard, and have also started buying things for our kitchen renovation. We are hoping to be done by late spring/early summer. But I'll keep in mind that we started our great room project in November and still haven't finished it, haha.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about our coastal cottage farmhouse interior colors! I look forward to updating you on the rest of our home projects. And someday I will get around to posting about our great room update, whenever we finish that!
With love,
Brittany