Gorgeous color! the colour me happy blog has a great post about picking white vs cream for trim - might be helpful :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: colour me happy

I prefer cream

We had to have our gutters, downspouts, fascia replaced, and decided to go with what the company called Country White. SO nmuch better with our lighter beige siding and face brick in brown and cream tones.

The guy tried to sell us on the standard color, which was white - glary, grey-undertoned white. This is still white, but warm and just âÂÂalmostâ white. I cannot imagine how different it would have looked with the bright, standard white trim.

It really just depends on your house and your preferences! I prefer a bright white for trim, but once again, it depends on the house, and your preferences. It's up to you :). Creamy or off whites often match best with warm colors, IMHO. A cool color usually doesn't look as good with it, in my opinion.

I like the cream, too.

mahlgold, when you say trim, does that include gutters? We painted our trim and gutters white (sorry, no clue which white it was) with a gray-green main body color. If I had it to do over again, I'd paint the trim white and the gutters a charcoal gray to blend with our concrete tile roof. Our white gutters started looked dirty fairly quickly, much to my dismay. Actually, considering the shape the gutters are in, I will get to do it over again any day now.

Our painting contractor told us that white gutters don't age well *after* they had finished painting the house. That's just one of the reasons why I'd never hire them again. They also painted our front door *while it was closed*! Yep, nice white border around the edge of our newly painted cranberry red door. Idiots.

Anyway, white gutters turning dingy quickly might be more of a problem in my area (PNW) than elsewhere but I thought I'd give you a heads up so you can check into whether it's an issue or not before you paint.

Thanks everyone. Once the sun comes up here, i'll go hold up some swatches and figure out what i'm doing.

Lisa-i was including the gutters as well. So you would have painted the gutters the same color as the roof? i don't think i've ever seen that before. why not paint them the color of the house?

We had our house re-sided with prefinished cedar shingles last year. The color is almost identical to BM Tree Moss. They couldn't paint the trim right after the siding was put up, because it was too cold -- had to wait til spring. So for a few months, we had the old white trim color with the new siding. Then, the trim was finally painted cream (can't recall which color we used... might be Natural Wicker) and it looked SO much better than white. I think it depends on your siding color, and I'm not familiar enough with your color to really say, but in our case, cream was much better than white. Our house looks more elegant, I think!

We also painted the gutters the same color.

I would trust Ben Moore to come up with a good color combination so I would go with the Mascarpone.

Your house is just beautiful whatever color you decide. Tell me, is your entire house wood or is there siding on it? You could of covered this already since I sometimes don't read all the comments.

newdawn, the photo above is from the BM brochure, not the OP's house.

LOL!!! I wish that was my house. Here's my house.

mahlgold, I think I would do cream on your house in that setting. White is also lovely, but definitely and more crisp, formal look. Maybe it's just the azaleas, but I'm liking a softer, warmer look on your house. Have you looked at actual paint chips together in the natural daylight on the front side of your house?

I think gutters should blend with their surroundings since they are not an architectural feature. On our recent paint job - we did vertical gutters the color of the house and horizontal gutters the trim color (creamy white). I am really happy with this approach as they do a nice job of disappearing.

I would go with the cream, looks beautiful in the BM picture.

Since you already have white gutters, malhgold, maybe this isn't an issue for you. Maybe they stay looking good longer in your area than in mine. You can always ask your painters how well white gutters fare in your area and then decide.

But if you want options, you can paint the trim below the gutters white (or cream) and paint the gutters in a color that closely matches your roof. Or you could paint the gutters the same as your house color. It all depends on whether you want to make the gutters - a functional feature - stand out as an architectural feature or give prominence to the real architectural features on your home.

As for downspouts, I'd paint them the same color as whatever they are resting on: trim color if they are on top of trim or house color if they hang down in front of siding.

I never used to see it this way but I'm with laurainlincoln now. Gutters aren't architectural, they're a necessity and I don't want to draw attention to them. Unless they're copper gutters with artistic downspouts like gushing dragons' mouths. Then heck yeah, make them babies stand out, they cost enough! LOL Anyway, I see gutters in the same light as electrical outlets in a kitchen's backsplash. Extremely useful, couldn't live without them but I don't want to focus attention on them.

One more thing. Previously our gutters were painted a midnight blue. We noticed when we were getting ready to paint that they also looked more tired than the rest of the house, however their darker color better hid that fact.

Your home may be simpler in style than the house in BM's brochure but it's still very lovely!

Did you go with white or cream? Inquiring minds want to know. ;-)

went with the "creamier" color, BM mascarpone, although on my house it does look white, I guess just not white/white. Still agonizing over the actual house color, but I think I'm getting close. Can't wait until this is done. Might be almost as bad as the decision making for the kitchen remodel.