At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s hard to find the best paint color for your house’s exterior. White is a classic, but choose the wrong shade and you’ll end up with a very expensive mistake.
We wanted to take the guesswork out of choosing the best white paint for your house, so we asked the architect and designer members of our Architects & Designers Directory to share their vetted shades of exterior white paint. They’ve painted countless houses over the years and know what works. Here they generously share their 10 favorites.
What’s your go-to shade of white paint? Tell us in the comments below.
Above, top row, from left: Benjamin Moore Brilliant White; Benjamin Moore Simply White; Dunn-Edwards Crystal Haze; Farrow & Ball All White; Benjamin Moore White Heron. Bottom row: Sherwin-Williams Pure White; Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee; Benjamin Moore Linen White; Porter Paints Atrium White; and Benjamin Moore Cloud White. Above: For this house in Connecticut, Brooklyn’s O’Neill Rose Architects used low-luster Benjamin Moore Brilliant White, which principal Devin O’Neill calls “a standard that always looks good.” The firm worked with Donald Kaufman on the palette for the house and chose Donald Kaufman Color DKC-44 in semi-gloss for the porch and ceiling. Above: Interior designer Meg Joannides of MLK Studio in LA recently completed this Brentwood Park home. On the exterior, she used Sherwin-Williams Pure White, a true white that barely hints toward warm. The charcoal gray shutters are painted in Benjamin Moore Onyx. Above: Architect Tim Barber chose Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee for this new house in Santa Monica. The color is also a favorite of SF Bay Area designer Nicole Hollis. Above: Donald Billinkoff of Billinkoff Architecture in NYC rarely uses any other white than Benjamin Moore White Heron. Says Billinkoff, “In bright light it is warm, and in low light it is bright.” Above: NYC’s 2Michaels worked with midcentury antiques dealer Larry Weinberg in choosing Benjamin Moore Simply White for this outdoor room on Martha’s Vineyard. Interior designer Kriste Michelini also recommends this shade.
Above: Los Angeles’s DISC Interiors painted the exterior of this Los Feliz home in Crystal Haze from Dunn-Edwards. This shade has the deepest tan inflection of the paints recommended here. Above: SF Bay Area designer Nicole Hollis chose Farrow & Ball All White as her pick—the whitest white of our recommendations. In this image from Farrow & Ball, the door and metalwork are painted in Pitch Black. Above: Nashville architect Marcus DiPietro chose PPG Porter Paints Atrium White for the exterior of this modern, Japanese-influenced home in Oak Hill, Tennessee. Next to Linen White (further below), Atrium White is the second warmest of the bunch. Above: NYC’s Steven Harris Architects painted this Upper West Side townhouse in Benjamin Moore’s Cloud White. Photograph by Elizabeth Felicella. Above: SF Bay Area landscape architecture firm Pedersen Associates admires Benjamin Moore’s Linen White, shown here on a house in Mill Valley. Says principal Pete Pedersen, “Here in Northern California, the quality of light is such that you need to take a little off of the whites to keep from too much reflective glare.” Linen White is the warmest of the 10 whites shown here.
When you register as a free Member of the Remodelista family of websites (Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home), you gain access to all current posts plus 10 archived posts per month, our internal bookmarking tool, and the community bulletin board.
Access 10 archived posts (older than one year) per month on each site
Use of our internal bookmark tool, so you can save products, posts, and other pages for quick reference
Access to our community bulletin board so you can ask and answer design-related questions
Unlimited access to the Product Catalogs, Design Travel sources, and Architect & Designer Directory listings
Choose from our ten newsletters to keep up with the latest on the sites
Or Subscribe for Maximum Value!
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Annual subscribers pay 50% off the monthly subscription price of $9.99
×
Subscribe to the Remodelista family of websites
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Annual subscribers pay 50% off the monthly subscription price of $9.99
×
Sorry! As a registered member you get 10 free posts from our archive (posts more than a year old) every 30 days. You have reached your limit for this 30-day period. If you would like to access unlimited posts from the archive (ad free, too), become a subscriber today, and keep reading as many articles as you want.
Full Access Individual Subscription
Benefits include:
Unlimited access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home sites
Ad-free browsing environment
Unrestricted access to 30,000+ archived posts
Receive the full-text daily newsletters
All features that Members have access to
Annual subscribers pay just 50% off the monthly subscription price of $9.99
Sorry! You have reached your limit of three (3) free posts from our archive every 30 days. You can increase this to 10 posts by joining as a free Member, or read unlimited posts with no ads by becoming a paid Subscriber.
Subscribe to the Remodelista family of websites
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Annual subscribers pay 50% off the monthly subscription price of $9.99
Become a Member at no charge
When you register as a free Member of the Remodelista family of websites (Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home), you gain access to all current posts plus 10 archived posts per month, our internal bookmarking tool, and the community bulletin board.
Congratulations on becoming a Subscriber to Remodelista, Gardenista and The Organized Home! You now have access to many great features across the sites:
Unlimited access to all three sites
Ad-free browsing environment
Unrestricted access to 30,000+ archived posts
Receive any of the newsletters, including the the full-text daily Remodelista and Gardenista newsletters
Use of our internal bookmark tool, so you can save products, posts, and other pages for quick reference
Access to our community bulletin board so you can ask and answer design-related questions
Congratulations on joining as a free Member of Remodelista, Gardenista and The Organized Home! You now have access to many great features across the sites:
Access to all posts published in the past year
Access 10 archived posts (older than one year) per month on each site
Use of our internal bookmark tool, so you can save products, posts, and other pages for quick reference
Access to our community bulletin board so you can ask and answer design-related questions
Unlimited access to the Product Catalogs, Design Travel sources, and Architect & Designer Directory listings
Choose from our ten newsletters to keep up with the latest on the sites
If at any time you want to become a Subscriber and enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to all our content, just go to the My Account link and choose Subscribe.
Have a Question or Comment About This Post?
Join the conversation