The exterior of my house is SW Alabaster and the trim is SW Pure White. I researched white paints ad nauseum last year. I’ll look for photos I took when sampling several whites for the trim. My three sisters thought I was crazy - they couldn’t really see the difference between all of the whites 😂

I think a lot of people use the same white for ceiling and trim (including crown) - they look just a little different due to the sheen level and you don’t have to worry about pairing two whites that don’t work well next each other.

FYI - I am pretty sure that I selected my exterior colors + learned about the ceiling/trim from Kylie M Interiors.

Any white should work but I would recommend a plain white that is untinted or a ceiling paint such as Sherwin Williams Flat Ceiling White

If you are in the Omaha area feel free to give us a call.

Scott's Painting & Staining Inc

Hi! We just finished our custom home build about 6 months ago. I agonized over which whites for well over a year (because the house was still being built so I didn’t have rooms to sample them in, and I initially thought we’d be going with Benjamin Moore paints and had my colors picked, and then I discovered his painter uses Sherwin Williams and then I had to do it all over again, LOL!) I ended up choosing SW Alabaster as a whole house interior color, and I looked very hard at both pure white and extra white as trim colors, but in light situations with north facing low light (our house is on the north side of a hill and our best views look north, so very heavy with northern light in our home) Anyways, in that kind of lighting I felt that both pure white and extra white were too cool looking with the alabaster. I also had very bright, clean white kitchen cabinets because we went with IKEA Axstad white cabinets chosen early on in the process, and I felt the need to bridge the look of my white cabinets with alabaster walls. Can you tell the amount of agony?? LOL!

Anyhooooooo.... what I decided to do was go for SW alabaster on the walls and the ceilings, and SW high reflective white on our trim because it looked very neutral against the alabaster and also looked the same as my kitchen cabinets. I’m super happy with the same wall color on the ceilings as the walls. The high reflective white stands out subltly with zero clashing and keeps my cabinets from standing out in the wrong way. (My floors are a natural bamboo in a bossy light brownish yellow, and most of my accent colors are in the watery blues and greens family. We live on the coast in the Pacific Northwest, so a LOT of green coming in through every window.)

Here’s a photo I took of my dog, and one I took of my nephew’s photography above my mantle. Please don’t judge everything in the photo’s we are not finished with everything. We did most of our own interior work, and we haven’t done everything yet like cover the beams and stuff, finish touch up paint (our electrician made a huge mess, but I digress...) or even buy most of the furniture we intend to get. But you get the idea of the color on the walls and ceiling and the trim color. Hope that helps!

Oh! I wanted to add that I seriously thought about going with the alabaster in a shinier sheen for the trim... except for the fact that I wanted to not have my extremely white kitchen cabinets stand out like a sore thumb.

@skmom looks great! What sheen did you go with on the walls? I have loved matte for the past few years in my former home but as I’m building a house and painting open layout in sw alabaster with north west light am considering eggshell. Your walls look perfect!

Rachael Schweizer, thank you! We went with either flat or matte, I don’t remember which. It was the least shiny available in each line we went with as we went with one of their more expensive lines in our bathrooms and less (not least) expensive in our other rooms. The exact same paint went on our ceilings as the walls. I went with eggshell in my last home (though that was Benjamin Moore) and I liked it a lot, but my last home already had level 5 smooth walls. Our current house we decided to not pay for that level and went with a light orange peel texture, so I wanted flat paint to minimize the texture.