We just painted our walls SW Alabaster white. I absolutely love it!

Lori A. Sawaya, thank you for correcting me. I'll check out your suggested alternative!

Ac Lb - thank you! That was my second choice and now I can't remember why I didn't go with it. I'll give it a try!

I've never heard of full spectrum paint!

@blmckenz, I feel you. I chose SW Agreeable Gray, that *everyone* and their dog adores, nothing but beautiful pictures online-painted our kitchen and pantry, and bought a lot w/plans to do the living room/hallway as well---I don't like it in the pantry at *all*, and go back and forth w/it in the dining part of the kitchen, holding up the rest of our reno w/my panic attack-I totally get your losing sleep over it. Now I've got several samples and have been moving a painted board all over the place. Sigh. The irritating part--I chose dark colors three times for other rooms, and they were perfect. Light colors tho-nope nope nope can't do it.

I've never heard of full spectrum paint!

It's pretty and kind of fun. The color science community looks at it with a bit of side eye because a spectral curve is a spectral curve but from a purely color appearance point of view, it's pretty and fun to look at and live with.

I've personally found it to be an excellent solution to confounding inherent lighting situations.

Lori A. Sawaya, thank you for correcting me.

Maybe more like coaching you in the right direction. ;)

Well huh, I'll check it out!

Missi - thanks for your comment - I thought everyone loved Agreeable Gray! Let me know what you end up choosing. I have Tricorn Black in my hearth room alcove and I love it. It looks like I thought it would. :) SW Sand Dollar has been kind to me too. I have that in the master bedroom and office with black ceilings. I think my husband is tired of me obsessing over white paint. :)

Actually undertones are what most people call the hues and IMO perfectly allowable.I think you will have difficulty with whites where you get lots of greenery outside it always reflects inside . As for yellow almost always comes from the lighting so change the bulbs to LEDs in 4000K and then see if you have yellow “UNDERTONES” BTW I almost always use C2 paint.

Thank you! I will definitely try changing the bulbs - a much more affordable option than repainting all these two story walls. Now I'm thinking I should start moving away from whites (that always look great in magazines!) and consider a neutral that can handle the sun, greenery, and other surroundings. I love a more modern look for this large area and am stumped. Your comment is much appreciated!

We do not live in magazines with our lighting corrected with Photoshop filters.

True white will reflect all colors equally and appear white when lit with a balanced white light.

If the white has a bit of yellow or blue or green or red or any combination it will not appear true white - the bits of color in an off white will reflect more than wavelengths not in the off white.

If the light isn't a perfectly balanced white light the colors of the light will be reflected by the white.

Your indoor lighting is not going to be perfectly balanced. Sunlight is rarely perfectly balanced as it shifts through the day and hits the earth at a different angle based on the time of day, the season, your latitude, amount of cloud cover, amount of pollution and altitude.

Light may be absorbed or reflected by colors outside your windows, by tints in the window glass or by colors inside your home.

This makes selecting a white that will look the same on every wall in your home pretty close to impossible unless you have a room with no natural light and lots of artificial lighting that hits every nook and cranny evenly.

As for undertones . . .

I don't really care what the hue measurement is on a white if that white appears blue next to a pure white. The undertone is blue and it will likely look like I painted my walls baby blue by the time I paint several hundred square feet of wall. The undertone is blue.

It is subjective - not everyone will describe a paint as having the same undertone. We all see colors a bit differently. My bathroom is painted BM Quiet Moments. I see it as a greenish blue, some describe it as a blue green and my sister sees the room as blue, she sees no nuance of green.

Knowing that the white you picked is in the yellow hue family doesn't really tell you much about how they will appear in your home. Why? Because almost all of the whites produced by paint manufacturers have and LCH CIE Hue that is in the Yellow hue family.

Here are some pics that will show what I am saying:

Sherwin Williams Internet rendition of their whites with hue measurements for row 2 and 6 on each fan deck page. With the exception of three colors they are all in the Yellow Hue Family. The blue star is Dover White.

If I enhance the colors with photo editing software these are the enhanced colors - not perfect - computers don't render colors perfectly, but it gives you an idea of why hue and undertone may not be the same.

Don't be surprised if you pick a color from page 257 and see baby blue walls after you paint several hundred square feet of white paint with a strong blue undertone, even if the hue family is yellow or green.

Here is a picture of the actual SW Fan Deck.

In your case, I would not expect strong yellow color on the walls, but if you have yellow lighting or the sun angle is enhancing the yellow you may see yellow. It is dirty enough to look beige under most conditions, but it will never look the same on all the walls in your home and it may go yellow or green or gray depending on the light and colors that are being reflected. It would be difficult to get a lighting scenario where Dover White would look blue or lilac or pink because those wavelengths will be absorbed vs reflected.

I don't really care what the hue measurement is on a white if that white appears blue next to a pure white.

I love how every other color influences color appearance - except for white. White is the exception and the mythical "pure white" will magically reveal those secret undertones.

Truth is white skews color appearance more dramatically than any other color.

It is subjective - not everyone will describe a paint as having the same undertone

This is true. Undertones are just someone's subjective opinion of what they think a color looks like under random, unspecified light sources.

Everybody is right about undertones. Can not get it wrong because it's all about how a color actually looks to you wherever you are.

Knowing that the white you picked is in the yellow hue family doesn't really tell you much about how they will appear in your home.

Hue Family is literally 100% about color appearance under a specified light source and describing it in a user-friendly format that's based on the same numeric values that were used to make the color in the first place.

Because almost all of the whites produced by paint manufacturers have and LCH CIE Hue that is in the Yellow hue family.

This is mostly true. Yellow, Green-Yellow and Green hue families to be precise.

Most color measurement instruments lose sensitivity near and below the blue region of the visible spectrum.

If you can't measure it, you can't make it.

Which is why there are very few white paint colors that factually belong to the blue hue family.

Lily White from Benjamin Moore is as close as you're going to get.

If you want to discern hue bias for a color of white, compare it to a chip of Lily White. The ones you *think* are blue, won't look blue.

You can only manage choosing white paint colors if you know what hue family it belongs to.

If a low Chroma white shifts bluish in your space, then you know whites from that hue family shift blue under the inherent light source.

Common sense tells you if you keep choosing whites from that same hue family, you're going to get the same result.

Logically you then move to whites from different hue family in order to get a different result.

Without the factual, objective framework of hue families, there is no strategy.

No plan.

All you can do is shuffle paint chips and guess about which samples to buy.

I am not familiar with the Sherwin Williams colors but one--I have Frosty White on my kitchen cabinets, as it was one of the standard colors offered by my cabinet manufacturer (Tedd Wood). The room has south and west exposures, outside are lots of trees and shrubs, and my white screened porch, and it never skews to any discernable hue. It's very neutral and almost looks gray at certain times of the day. You may want to try it.

I have Frosty White on my kitchen cabinets

Perfect example. Belongs to the Green-Yellow hue family. Can show up very neutral, no discernible hue as easily as it can show up bluish.

Only way to know is to test in your space. If it's not what you want, move hue families. Can also try going darker or more colorful. A factual framework of hue, value and chroma color notations provides the framework and direction to try other colors.

If you look a color up on the paint website, does it give you those numbers so I could look at that wheel?

Probably. We have a couple hundred colors uploaded. If you can't find a color, let me know.

Don’t make the mistake I just made! I painted my dining room with cathedral ceilings the same color I have in my basement which looks FABULOUS in the basement, and looks pretty good in my kitchen...don’t like it in the dining room. I see a completely color in the dining room than in the basement. My basement is very dark, the color looks very light cream almost white. In my dining room it’s light yellowy peach....not happy I choose that...not changing it now.

Happy Easter to all!! May good will prevail. Cooking meals for family members and they will do a "drive-by" and pick up their meal since we can't enjoy it together this year. I'm a drive-by cook! See if you can help someone else too. Time well spent. And I have toilet paper!! Fortunately, I have a "back up supply"!

Great advice Flo! Happy Easter to all:)!

Flo, thank you! From your mouth to God's ears.

What a wonderful way to share the holiday.

Happy Easter to all!

Got rave reviews on my Easter feast. Yummy! Amazing how creative we can get when necessity calls!