An Architect's Guide to Color

Jamieson Thanks a lot Jody, now I have to clean my monitor and keyboard from my human coffee fountain reaction to your article!

feeny My dogs are looking at me with concern as I laugh and snort uncontrollably. Priceless.

Samantha Schoech Ha!

winstondog I'm trying to pick interior colors for our new house, & yep, this is pretty much what it's like!

Serengetti Interiors Honey Badger White is the best because it doesn't give a ....

M Studio Interior Design Extremely funny, and not as far fetched as you might think!

rtk123 Laugh out loud funny! Especially since I've been going through color selection for my kitchen renovation.

pauli12 Where were you when I was trying to pick my perfect white? Here here.

gaillorene I am not awake. Sitting here with coffee, staring at the screen. Why won't it download? Oh, I am so not awake. Finally got it.

debv8 And who says designers are humourless?? haha! love it!

Richard Bubnowski Design LLC My wife would like me to add the color that I chose for my own house, "You're ruining my architectural vision White".

Marie Meko, Allied ASID Honey Badger don't care ! Great article to start the day with. Thank you!
Marie Meko

Barbara Jacobs Color and Design Jody, thanks for creating this unusual palette. They look pretty much the same...it must be my monitor. The color names are great. One you forgot...Valuable White.

mmsim I bet you could show that to a client and they would pick one over another. I was always taught the principle of KISS, keep it simple stupid.

fergusclan Keep these coming - I LOVE them!!!

Judy one of them caught my snarky side - so true

callarman shoot my favorite was this space intentionally left blank I thought it was a lovely shade of white

nikkiMdesign Haha! Love it!

ariel I believe I had a similar reaction to Judy. LOL Very similar to Whiter Shade of Pale white!

deedeelouise I never knew there were so many shades of white. I guess it depends on the light. VERY funny article! May I add "The White Stuff".

Kathy Harris I saw this atricle and my first thought was AWESOME! A chart to hlep me with painting my walls in my new house...then I open it and couldn't figure out why they all looked the same..thought my computer was acting up. You forgot Eggshell White, (the color of all my walls). Verry funny great way to wake up in the morning.

storklady Love your sense of humour. This was great fun! :-)

kimber032 Haha! :P

jcraighil So true, I laughed out loud. But what about Ceiling White? or did I miss it...

Isabelle B At last, someone who understands me!

sailnmuffin Lulz.

Now I'm going to pull someone else's leg...a contractor or paint store, maybe. Tell' em I can't decide between "Angry White" and "I Said White" and then ask their opinion. Hilarity.

isabel06 Hilarious!

staceyvdg Early in my career at my first job out of architecture school, I was asked, "are you good with selecting colors?". I replied that I thought I was and was given the task to select a few options for the interior of the house that we were working on. It was a traditional style home, and I selected some fairly muted colors, but they were colors. When I show them to the architect, he shook his head and handed me a very limited paint deck- only whites and said, "only choose from these."

smesa0 don't worry...it'll be all white

pnovakovich FABULOUS....!!!!
As an Interior Designer, I can appreciate all your hard work and know it will make a huge difference in my world of normal confusion!!! :-) It most certainly puts a smile on my face every time I see it!

l1430 Calling my kettle..... WHITE! Exactly how my livingroom looks.

Architectural Homes by Anders Inc Only an architect can appreciate those subtle differences!

marisa125 Having only just moved into our first home, I spent too many years living in rooms painted "Renter's White" ... layer upon layer of white paint trying to cover up the previous tenants' grime/bad spackle jobs/unauthorized non-white paint.

teanhny I'm Not in the Mood White

franki7 How "white" you are!! franki

R. Martin Choate Hysterical! I look forward to all of your posts!

loulydeco Ha!ha! How it's starting to look in my choices for painting my new house interior.

xenasmom Hilarious. I don't know which I enjoyed more - the article or the comments that followed. Thanks, Jody!

tabaccs Just choose one then try to match it again a few years later when the paint company has changed all the names! White is not white!

Laurie I loved this!

judy741 I don't know.... I just can't decide......

Tara Veith Design, LLC When you're White, you're White!

woolylam Ack!!!! White!!! You MUST use color!!

jfletch Thank you. When I built my home I wanted white kitchen cabinets. Then I could not figure out how to flow from white kitchen cabinets to stained trim or color walls. Instead I ending up with white cabinets, white trim and white walls. Three different shades of white. But all white. People do not understand how difficult that was to pick out three different shades of white. LOL. Sense then walls have been painted a different color but cabinets and trim still a shade of white.

kuchendesign I can´t see any color

gerrycabc wow, am I ever slow. I had to read the comments to finally get the joke!

cwiser This reminds me of a sponsor announcement (i.e. advertisement) that's been playing for months on our local NPR station -- for a company that sells a leather chair in "True Black." I always wonder, what would "False Black" look like? Or just plain "Black?"

Chroma Design Ugh! I can't decide. They all have their own subtle nuance!! I think "this space has been intentionally left blank" goes with everything!
Brilliant, Jody!

surfmom Jody, most of these sound like the nicknames kids used to call me when I was growing up! (They claimed that I glowed under water when I swam. My mom saw it as a safety feature.) Fun post!

Leanne Nowell Ennui white sounds perfect, at the moment my house is painted Antique Off white... thanks for the smile.

mpilcher I am in the process of choosing colours for our new house. DH says - oh just paint it all white ... thinking that there is only one "white" - obviously he needs to attend Painting White 101. Good fun!

mermaiden Hilarious!!!

suzeal white with character! ;>

Britastina I wasn't going to click on this link because my computer was so slow loading the colors. Clicked on it anyway. Now I'm snorting coffee out of my nose. And choking.

Shawna Waller That's awesome! Made my day.

jburkett This is truly hilarious! I love Houzz (obviously) but it typically doesn't make me laugh out loud--THANKS for that : )

janescriv Loved it. Thanks for the good laugh!

Sylvie Regimbald / Sylvie Design LOL,Tout simplement brillant

Barbara Robinson Love this kind of humor.

gaild May be the most hysterical and true entry on your website. What a riot! Not, though, of color.

Haugen Drafting & Design, Inc. Oh, I just went through this last week, this would have really helped then, haa! :-) I should send this link to clients to show them just how EASY our jobs are!

Carolyn Zone9alady BETTY WHITE my fav....

3D-Tile-Design - Bertram Tasch I use a HP EliteBook 8760w Mobile Workstation with a 17.3-inch diagonal RGBLED-backlit FDH UWVA anti-glare DreamColor* display (1920x1080 resulution) with a 10-bit panel that can display over one billion colors (64 times the colors supported by traditional LCDs) however I can't see any difference!

Maybe I should go to see my Optometrist ???

ttwist Thank you, this is very en"light"ening!

Country Design Style Great to laugh, especially at ourselves!

When a client is difficult with color I only give them three to pick from. Next time I'll give them one color with three different names. Thank you.

jeanrhude I think the last one should be, "absence of white"

redteamstrategies This is perfect for us interior designers to send to our architect friends. Looking forward the the 'gray color chart'. You nailed this one

avrilarts Hilarious!

sarahsmiles You are so white, I mean right.

gbkatzman Thumbs up. You're hysterical!

amaebi519 They're all so PERFECT! How do I decide??!

tobler Do you know the children's book, "The Jolly Postman" by the Ahlbergs? The postman delivers a catalogue to the witch offering boots in midnight black, coal black, jet black, crow black, and bat black.

Karen Grundy "Fifty Shades of White." Held my attention for longer than "Fifty Shades of Grey."

David Dozois Creative Empire Cool.....white?,,,er, ah, I mean right?

Helen Glazer, Artist I've got one: V_NN_ WHITE

ldzachary I just painted my house interior Eider White!

jxleonard Having just spent 15 hours over a 3 week period of time with my decorator obsessing over choosing the perfect gray wall color and then the just so white baseboard/ceiling trim, this chart would have been come in quite handy! (LOL! Too true!)

Jeff Pelletier I specify honey badger white for my favorite clients

Ivana Ilic_Rhb I have a friend who is an architect and this is totally true for him. I laughed so badly when I saw the post, as the timing couldn't be better. These days he is painting the interior of his house and previously told us that he would choose colour other then white - well guess what was his choice - a shade of white :-) He told us that we who use colours wouldn't understand what that means, but now with the color schema in the post above, I can assure him that I can :-)))) Hilarious!

Robin Wirfs_Horowitz I need to sleep. How about a little White Noise?

Charlene Shaw You seem to have forgotten one or two: Frank Lloyd White and Guilty White

marissa camacho How about Elmer Fudd to Bugs Bunny, "Weft ow wight?"

simmer5 lol. that is really funny it made me smile.

(m) + charles beach INTERIORS Very very funny - got me laughing out loud - not an easy feat!

PINTART MODERNO hahahahahahahaha at first I thought I had a problem with my screen hahahahaha can´t stop laughing...

zx10grrrl I, too, had to mop up my workspace after snerking the remainder of my morning coffee. Thank you for a truly eloquent article ...

"ELOQUENCE, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white." -- Ambrose Bierce

Carol me also...no colors! Anxious to see this info.

Tileshop Soooo funny! Honey Badger! Haha! Betty White! Bwahaha!

cspendergast I've been so sucked into the color choice craziness that it took me a few takes to realize I'd been had - in so many ways! Thanks for the reality check!

Kit Lang "Republican" made me shoot rootbeer out of my nose. :)

Design Diva LLC You are KILLING me, Smalls!

Kaleidoscope Color Consulting LOVE IT!!! LMAO!

She Builds That was laugh out loud FUNNY!

vickiandted This was very funny, but as an architect, you forgot one - Frank LLoyd White.

foyer très drôle! I love ennuie - but have you tried ennui total? its not that hard to get

carolerains and of course, there's always White on Rice.

thegreenbee HA! Where can I get 5 gallons of Betty White? (That's the sassy white with enough personality to fill a room, right? Lol)

linbar That's odd. These are exactly the colors I see when I attempt to find just the right white on a color chart at ACE.

Margaret Eaton This is very helpful. I'll be able to pull it up as a separate window and work out exactly what 99.99999999999% of the modern renovations/designs on Houzz have used. Example attached.

username123 This is totally cute and fooled me - at first! Reminds me of Robert Ryman's white paintings; just great, but your "samples" are even more subtle! Fun!

Fine Art & Portraits by Laurel Ah Jody, mah wee big mohn (too much Monarch of the Glen lately)! Dentists can discern these colors. I twice tried to match white faux finishes on repairs in dental suites. Arghhh. And yes, every architect will swear that the least bit of color 'makes the walls feel like they're closing in', in a room the size of a basketball court.

larajill Thank you so much! This has validated the color choice for my house. As a DIYer, when I explain what I'm doing it's usually "um, white", "just white" or "yes, white"! Your article has come in perfect timing.

kljones Please put all these articles in a book so I can give them as gifts! You are too funny!

vfreyes why didn't someone think of this before??!!! hahaha

Pangaea Interior Design, Portland, OR Where's Decorator's White? I'm just sure it's different from Architect's White. Glad I wasn't sipping my coffee when I read this. It would be all over my keyboard now. Funny!

Jennifer thats it - am going white!

karoesty This space has been left intentionally blank white - it's a personal favorite.

moomah Just about white.

tnoldan How true! LOL.

karelina I could really use some help, since I have to paint the whole house - inside and out, but the colors don't show - just words.

Elaine M. Rushlow C.K.D. OMG your funny .... I've so seen the white now.

Nicole Whiteout! I like

mrsben You missed your calling. You should have been a stand-up Comedian. Ha, ha, ha.
Thanks for the laugh!

livehappy Republican ...... perfect.

Laughed so hard my nose hurts. (Noses were made for exhaling air, not coffee).

rolmeister As an industrial designer who has stepped on a few egos (accidently on purpose), you are astounding me with your perspective and humour about your chosen profession. I am enjoying your Blog very much. Thank you and keep it coming.

beverlyalbers Ahh... And you could have added Snow White! ; )

ane_2176 Never knew architects are like lawyers... Making simple white complicated hahaha...

slwilson98 Perfect! I'm an Architect and have been agonizing over color changes for my home for WEEKS. Angst White it is!

adagio7 Complete waste of my time.

pgsoares I prefer the Lighter White...more light we can't find!! I'm laughing...

kennedytarheel how about white lightning? pure adrenaline rush!

Britastina Adagio,
Maybe black would be more vibrant? Now, which black would it be? "Halloween Cat", "Matches my Mood", "Really Dangerous Thunderstorm", "Too Charcoal"?

(m) + charles beach INTERIORS Frank Lloyd White

Britastina pgsoares:
Like your style!

Britastina Not in a white room, but right now my sweet cat Daffodil is sleeping on her favorite sunbeam coming in from a southwest window. I LOVE light and white!

GTNJ Architecture Love it!!

Monica M Hilarious!

Britastina Thanks, y'all! (obviously from Texas)

Stephanie Coviak I thought this wasn't showing up correctly on FB, so I went to the website LOL

Britastina OK, I wasn't the only one. Whew!!!!!

sara jane bolt Where is "IT'S SO WHITE!" Was it discontinued?

Margaret Eaton When I saw this article I immediately had to refer to your ideabook: http://www.dwell.com/articles/modern-architecture-interior-design-ideas-color-white.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=92812&utm_campaign=thisweekfromdwell&utm_medium=email

Roots and Rafters Mc Kim, Mead & White is probably my least favorite of these. I'm from NYC. ;)

anaelgoog I just had this discussion with my cabinet maker. I said I want white white. swiss coffee white? no, white white. this white? no, this other white. looks like swiss coffee. ok, but it's still not white white.

Barbara Jacobs Color and Design I've had a recent discussion about..."cream." Guess it's a version of..."white!" More cream or less cream?

greengirl So funny. Brings back a lot of memories with hubby about paint and light and white. But ? To all, why white? What does it do for architecture and furnishings? Feeling sooooo stupid. But will send to hubby and ask him to pick 1. He'll pick and swear that they're different.

rtk123 I didn't see pasty white! This is great.