white or wrong....

9:33 AM

Some of the most difficult colors to pick are neutrals, in my opinion. The reason is that unless you're looking at one of the true primary colors (red, yellow and blue), every color has an undertone. Undertones are often hidden in the base color and can be very difficult to detect.

Beige often has undertones that are yellow, green, red and orange. Gray can have undertones of blue, green and often purple. When you see a color scheme that just doesn't work, it is probably because the undertones are "off".

One very basic and easy way to identify undertones is to compare it to the primary colors. For example, if you are thinking of painting your room a hue of blue, the best way to detect the undertones would be to compare it to true blue.

I digress. What we really want to talk about it WHITE! As with any neutral, white has undertones, too but they are super sneaky. Often times, white pulls a lot of blue or a lot of yellow.

To combat this problem, people will decide to get a true white paint. This is the wrong approach. You'll need to paint many more coats of true white paint to get the depth and coverage you're hoping for - and chances are, it will still pull some of the surrounding colors.

The BEST WAY to combat this is to get a white paint with black in it - yes BLACK. I'm not talking about getting a gray paint (because black+white=gray, right?). I just mean that you'll want to get a formula that has a minimal amount of black. Or, if you decide to go get a true white, have the paint mixer add around 10 drops of black to a 1 gallon can before shaking it. You won't notice ANY difference in the color but you'll enjoy a depth of color and coverage that you won't get without it. It will also reduce the color variance of the white and the colors it pulls. Trust me on this one!

Let's practice identifying undertones (this will be a little tricky because all computer screens are calibrated a little differently but you'll get the idea)...