The Perks of White Walls

Few opportunities in this life will present you with more choices than selecting a color to paint your walls.  Each color comes with a subset of a hundred or so hues and shades.  Take green for example.  Do I want “fresh meadow,” “tossed salad, “elf,” or “spinach”?  If I ever want new curtains, will I be confining myself to only “green-friendly” fabrics?  Short of a nervous breakdown, I have decided that white walls are an underestimated asset to any home.

White walls are no cause for the blues.  Mistakenly thought of as stark, cold, or boring, they actually hold a lot of energy and potential.  If you’ve got good natural lighting in your home, the white will react dramatically to the sunlight, highlighting your architecture and adding life to the space.  Additionally, a white ceiling always gives off the illusion of more height.  For just a splash of white, painting the trim adds clean and defining touches.

White is effective if you’ve got large pieces of eye-capturing art, bold furniture, decorations, or my personal favorite, an impressively stocked bookshelf.  Frame your windows with curtains and shades in any color and design to create a symbiosis between the beauty of the outdoors and the beauty of the room.

The best part of having white walls is that anything works, and works terrifically.  Pair white walls with classic black or primary colors, or go modern with anything from magenta to teal.  Gold and gray astonish as both classical and modern.

If you plan on going white, you’ll need to do a bit of prep work.  Rough patches and knicks must be taken care of as not to be highlighted by the final product.  And if you’ve got children or pets keep in mind that white looks best kept clean (although you can rest assured that any shade of finger paint will match).  For more to consider, check out this blog about getting white right: http://10rooms.blogspot.com/2011/05/getting-white-right.html.