Choosing the Perfect Neutral for Contrast Trim

I’ve honestly been mulling over paint colours for this new/old house of ours since the day we purchased it, nearly four years ago now. Inside and out, the entire house has needed new paint. I’d worked through our entire main floor within the first few months of moving in – looking at it as an opportunity to test out some ideas and options and while it’s far better than it was, I haven’t fallen head-over-heels for any of the colours we’ve tried. With the extensive renovations we took on throughout or second floor, I’ve had so much more time to contemplate colour options up here. But, there’s also more pressure to get it right this time around knowing we won’t be circling back around to these spaces with more renovations. The wall colours were hard enough, but the trim colour has had me stumped.

Do I want to stick with a classic warm white to match our walls? Or do I want to try something with a bit more contrast? If I go with a contrasting trim colour, just how much contrast should I go for? It honestly felt a little overwhelming. And I’m sure the decision fatigue was setting in after all of the decisions we’d had to make through the rest of these spaces.

As we finished up every other part of these second floor spaces, I seem to have landed on a mix of things in terms of trim colour. In our primary bedroom, I stuck with a satin version of our wall colour (Swiss Coffee from Benjamin Moore). In Carson’s bedroom, I went with Slipper Satin from Farrow & Ball because it was the recommended white to pair perfectly with his wall colour (Light Gray). And finally, in our guest room, because I was so happy with how the recommended pairing in Carson’s room turned out, I decided to follow the pairing recommendations from F & B again, going with Dimity on the trim to pair perfectly with the Dead Salmon coloured walls. I have been absolutely thrilled with each of these choices and have zero regrets so far.

Having all of those paint colours scattered throughout our second floor truly has created the collected, cozy feel that I’ve been looking to bring into this new/old house of ours. It really adds to the charm and character of our home. But, it also means that whatever colours I choose for our hallway need to play well with all of these different colours. Our walls are currently a warm white (I’m still not sure that it’s the “right” warm white yet, but I’m going to try to work with it for now). I do still want to bring in a bit more character and personality through the space though, so I’d been leaning towards a neutral with a bit more contrast lately for our doors and trim. While our hallway does get some natural light from the window at the far end, it’s generally not a very bright space overall, which means any colour I did choose to go with couldn’t be too dark. Honestly, there was A LOT to factor into this decision.

I narrowed down my options fairly quickly – only letting myself consider colours from F & B and a few tried and true neutrals from Benjamin Moore. I stared at samples on our walls for weeks – moving them all around our second floor to test them out beside each of the wall and trim colours we’d already chosen as well as the current wall colour in our hallway. I tested them in the different lighting of all of these spaces, knowing that the doors would be open into north, south and west facing spaces, which each bring their own very different lighting conditions. All this testing really helped to narrow things down pretty quickly – leaving only two options that felt like a good fit in all of these spaces – Stony Ground and Drop Cloth, both from Farrow & Ball.

The part that really sealed the deal was testing them out in our entryway and on our stairs, just in case I decided to paint out our oak railings out in the same colour. I think I had a clear favourite right away, but after walking by them on our staircase for a few weeks, I felt so much more confident in my choice.

You can see that Stony Ground pulled more beige, while Drop Cloth looked a bit more gray . Our entryway is north facing, which means the lighting tends to feel darker and cooler in here on even the sunniest days. Gray is rarely the way to go in an already cool-toned feeling space – warmer colours will always help a north facing space feel warmer. Plus, I’ve just never really been much of a gray fan, making it easy for me to see a clear winner.

I ordered up a couple of cans of Stony Ground from Farrow & Ball a few weeks ago and I’m SO excited to see how they warm up our new second floor hallway!

Wishing you SUCH a lovely day my friends!