What pops into my mind first is Ellen Kennon's Pumice. Maybe Flyleft will also pop in and talk about it.

The interesting thing about using a full spectrum paint for a whole-house job is that it will look a bit different in each room, given the different light in each room. You get variation but guaranteed coordination because it actually is the same color.

I had to pick one color for my new house and went with a full spectrum color (Amy's Sarasota Sand). Most people think I used a subtly different color in every room....can't believe it's all the same color.

Now, after almost a year, I am going back and adding new colors to certain rooms, but I have been very happy with the full spectrum "builder beige" in the meantime.

On the chips, I like F&B Light Grey. And many have posted their undying love for Ben Moore's Revere Pewter. But I haven't personally chosen a gray, so perhaps I should shut up!

Red

You haven't picked a grey yet Red! Give it time!

Check out this link. Lots of pretty examples w/ paint names and manufacturers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Decor Pad Grey

I just painted my kitchen/living room/dining room all Ellen Kennon's Rainbow Fog. The space is technically a great room, but it's not very big, so we'll just say it's a pretty-good room :-). Anyway, Rainbow Fog is a lovely neutral, very pale but warm. I have very plain slab natural maple cabinets, honed venetian gold countertops (which makes them much more muted than polished), no trim around the windows or doors, and thrift store-chic/retro decor. I wanted a barely-there color that would fade go with such a mix, but still a definite contrast with the white of the windows and doors and ceiling.

The best thing about Rainbow Fog is that it never, ever gives off undertones that make you go "eewwww", like some other barely-there neutrals. I'm very happy with it. If you ask me what color it is though, I'd be hard pressed to say. It's kind of creamy, kind of off white, kind of taupe-ey. No pinkish or yellowish or greenish tint to it, though. If I were being romantic, I would say it's kind of an old canvas color. At least in my light :-)

Good luck!

Joanna

look at Revere Pewter & Edgecomb gray, both BM colors.

Go get as many samples of pale taupe, grey, cream and other colors as you can find. Follow the directions at the link for picking them, then tape each of the finalists to your walls for a few days. Inspect them at various times of the day and remove the "losers".

Undertones are as much a factor of lighting and reflections from other surfaces as they are the paint. At times my pure white hallway looks blue or pink from the lighting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Picking Paint Colors

I really like the entire color strip that contains SW Wool Skein. Each color blends so perfectly w/ my Sepia toned prints and pictures.

dreamywhite, I just repainted my living/dining/foyer in Farrow & Ball Strong White and painted all the trim F&B Pointing. It is just as you define - a soft neutral greyish cool colour. In the big 3foot posterboard mockup, I definitely felt it would be a creamy-grey but once painted, there is no warm creamy aspect to it but perhaps in a different geography it will show cream also. It is a very complex colour so I don't know what else to say beyond "greyish" - some green and some taupe depending on the light.

I will say that I've got an accent wall painted F&B Lamp Room Grey and there are definitely angles where the pale "Strong White" looks like it is a perfect match to the dark LRG.

I'm loving Strong White and I'd recommend it mightily.

Other F&B colours that you might like that are very pleasing in the light grey-cream-taupe realm are F&B's "Shaded White" and "Off White" - neither is really a white but both would be something you should check out. Also, don't bother with their small chips - get a sample tin and make a mockup which you'll have to look at a lot and in a lot of light. Like the FS colours, F&B also use loads of pigment and you simply can't get a feeling for the colours without looking at a larger mockup. (And even then it will probably be different when it goes all on ;-) )

lazygardens, LOL someone wrote out my process! I thought I was the only one that crazy :)

dreamywhite, I see that Amy suggested EK Pumice. While I adore the color and recommend it for some greys, for a taupey-grey I would not.

Revere Pewter is a really fascinating color, IMO, but maybe since you're saying you want something closer to white you might want to do it at 50%? (just a suggestion, let's not get into the whole debate about how doing that to a color formula changes it entirely - I know it may and even so, you never know whether it might be exactly what dreamy is looking for.)

May I ask, what specific colors have you looked at already? And how have you found them not to work? That could help us kind of bumper-car our way to the right tone for your specific lighting.

I recently painted my walls with BM Revere Pewter (not finished,yet). In the picture below, you can see the Revere Pewter on the left and the old Navajo White color (which has a yellow tone to it) on the right. The door and ceiling are Dunn Edwards Swiss Coffee.
Dunn Edwards makes a color similar to Revere Pewter and it's called Porous Stone. I'm going to continue painting over the Navajo White in the LR area that you see on the right.

BM Revere Pewter

Hi -

We just painted our entire first floor in Farrow & Ball "old white", which is a taupe-y grey. In some light, it also has a very slight hint of sagey green, but not so much that you'd think it's a green color. It definitely looks more taupe-y than anything else, and we've gotten lots of "oohs and aaahs" over it, even from the subs.

We have dark wood floors and white trim and baseboards (which is done in F&B "Pointing" as are our ceilings).

In the office and master bedroom, we used F&B "light grey", which is also a wonderful color but definitely darker and may not feel light enough for the main areas in your home, depending on what your natural light is like (and obviously, depending on your taste for dark vs. light).

Farrow & Ball has such wonderful big hand-painted swatch cards, and I would highly recommend purchasing them...they're a hefty $50, but definitely worth it and WAY better than the little brochure they'll send you for free, which has tiny little bits of color that give you just enough of a feel to want to see more!

If you're interested, I can take photos of these rooms, but we're moving in on Friday (after an 8-month whole house renovation), and we're in the throes of last-minute chaos with electricians hanging fixtures, painters doing touch-ups and punch list stuff. Our contractor put rosin paper down on the floors so they won't get messed up, and so the tone of the red rosin paper may influence what you'll see as the color of the walls.

Here's a tip for you - if you go to Google and press the tab for "Images" and type in the name of the paint that you're considering using, you'll probably see photos of rooms from magazines that used that color. It's very helpful. When we were considering using F&B's "Middleton Pink" for my teenage daughter's room, we were worried that it would be too little girl-ish, but when she saw the image of several rooms painted in Middleton Pink, she liked it and so we went with it (unfortunately, later on, after it was on the walls, I made the mistake of mentioning that it wasn't a very sophisticated color. DUH! WRONG thing to say to a teenager). Anyway, Google Images was very helpful!

Good luck with your search. I went through the identical struggle on the neutral grey taupe about six months ago so I know how difficult it can be!

Susan

Laurie-I love your pics of Revere Peweter...beautiful. So many people seem to love that colour.

Maybe these colours are too light...all creamy shades without the peach.
BM White Down
BM Albescent
Farrow & Ball Slipper Satin
BM Balboa Mist (more gray I think than the others)
Edgecomb Gray has also been mentioned above...I really like that one too.

Funny that you mentioned F&B Old White because I was waiting to see that color. I have a photo of it in my inspirational gallery. I'm always googling images for paint colors, it's my fav thing to do on here. If you have time to post a photo of that beautiful Old White please please do. I'm dying to see it in a real photo.

Is the BM white down brownish in anyway? It sounds very nice along with that Slipper Satin. I wish I had some samples of Farrow and Ball.

BTW what makes Farrow and Ball paint so great? I'd like to understand the difference between the big name brands and the ones I can afford like SW.

THANKS !

Okay, I'll try to remember to post some pics of our rooms in F&B's "old white" in the next few days, as well as "light grey" if you're interested.

I know that many people say that there is something lost in the depth of the color if you don't use F&B paints, but I must admit, my painter had the color copied. Since I have never seen the color in its original splendor in a whole room, I'll never know if my color match is not identical to what the F&B paint would've looked like. To me, my walls look the same as the "old white" color card that I have from F&B.

flyleft ... I like that method for picking paint colors because it doesn't rule out anything until you are looking at the paint with the flooring or fabric.

I'm sitting in a great room that is painted extremely pale shades of lavender, pink, peach, and blue .... we would never have come up with them any other way.

Dreamywhite - I live and die by SW Color To Go. Almost a whole qt. of paint for about $5.99 to test in any color you want. They also have lots of formulations from other paint companies. I get my BM colors mixed in the SW CTG samples.

Don't rule out Wool Skein of Revere Pewter to go w/ RH Silver Sage. I have my kitchen painted Revere Pewter and my ceiling edged out in RH Silver Sage (noy fully painted yet) and I think it looks FANTASTIC! My trim is not painted bright white though in the kitchen. It's painted SW White Hyacinth a very creamy off-white.

I used Cashmere one time and didn't care for the slight sheen even in the matte. I like a dead flat matte chalky finish. I passed on the Cashmere finish this last time around and tried Duration. seemed a hair flatter to me.

Late to this party, but I thought I'd do my one-trick-pony thing and recommend a color we used in our MBR: Lowe's Valspar Hotel St. Francis Clay Angel. It's a dark off-white in some lights, very light grey-taupe in others, very neutral but warm and pretty. Might be worth grabbing a paint chip just to check it out.

You guys are going to laugh but I changed my mind already. I went out and picked out our new living room furniture and picked out very soft pale colors (stone and seafoam). So I changed my paint color to SW Worldly Gray. Surprising it matches everything perfectly including the kitchen floor tile, wood flooring and my countertops. I have never been happier to just make a decision and go with it. This stuff gets stressful after awhile.

Sherwin Williams Wool Skein is the best neutral gray beige. Grays can be too cold, beiges can be too boring and dated. Wool Skein is the perfect blend of the two. Benjamin Moore's Revere Pewter looked too purple in my house and too dark. It worked in my friend's house, though.