Post images of the space. Design is visual‼️

Thank you Beverly! Sorry I have a duplicate picture here, And please excuse the conditions, I am still moving in, I'm low on furniture and the DR table is my disorganized command central

Firstly I just want to comment on your walnut Dr chairs- I have the exact same ones in almost the same color- so comfortable! Are you changing anything else? Can you add recessed lights for instance? That space needs a lot more light sources somehow, and it needs some contrast. Right now everything is beige.

Hi Anne - I’m certainly no expert but I’ve had some Samplize colors that I’ve placed around my house. I keep my house fairly dim due to eye issues and I’ve found that the west and north facing rooms change and/or suck the life out of any color. Right now, Farrow and Ball Dimity is winning. It’s just a small sample but I’ve put it everywhere and it’s pleasing.

Welcome to Arizona!

Even in our home there are few windows. Every window is a heat penetration, so those are kept to a minimum.

We went with a light cream with a warm undertone. Avoid cool whites with blue undertones. It looks like you gravitate towards those tones anyway.

If you are on the top floor, you could ask if you can install a light tube. Those offer a lot of light with a very small hole in the roof. My kitchen has a large skylight. It would be almost unbearable if it didn’t.

Our north winds in winter can be brutal. Don’t know if you are desert or mountains, but both can be difficult. We are low desert. Wind, any time of year is our bad weather. With your orientation, you are going to be exposed to those winds. Depending on

Oops. Accidentally hit post.
Depending on the quality of your windows, you may need heavy coverings.

We love it here. Hope you will, too.

bsgibbs thank you! This condo also has kitchen skylight and the interior bathrooms do too. It's a completely different color of light in those rooms. I like a warm, bright white in general. I'm having trouble with beige and greige these days. I haven't found the right one !

Connecticut Yankeeeee thank you! I'll try it!

Hallett & Co thank you. You are right about the beige. I like color and plan to add it in furnishings or decor and I think that's why I keep looking for a bright warm white. But I could be wrong as I often am, lol! Yes, I like the DR table and chairs. This came from my son-in-law's grandmother!

Lyn Nielson thank you! I'll get that color sample. Do you have an opinion on Chantilly Lace?

The back of my house faces north so I have many rooms experiencing low light. Beiges do tend to die in northern light unless they have a healthy dose of yellow or peach. I used BM Soft Chamois in two rooms. It is about as unyellow as you can have without the color looking dead. Seashell is another one to look at. I sampled that as well when considering Soft Chamois and it was a close second. It is a little brighter than Soft Chamois.

I used BM Timid White in my basement (only has windows on the north side) and just decided to use it again in my dining room because everything else I tried there looked dead or was too white to go with my chair upholstery. While Timid White can be noticeably yellow in some light, in northern light the yellow isn't as noticeable, but keeps it from looking dead. Acadia White is close to Timid White and is worth a try as well, as well as Linen White and Crisp Linen. Mountain Peak White is Timid White with less pigment, so that could be an option as well. Mayonnaise is another one we tried which is good in northern light.

kandrewspa oh my gosh what a list! You've clearly been around the block with low-light rooms. I'll sample these, thank you!

This chart will allow you to compare the warm or cool leanings of white paint colors.

This is a good, light paint color if you want to lean to a 'greige' paint color.

Are your interior doors dark? Will they get painted?

What happens with the wall to wall carpet?

FWIW…

https://www.kylieminteriors.ca/the-best-light-paint-colors-for-a-dark-room-basement/

LOVE BM Chantilly Lace LRV 92.2, but it is a very white White, not creamy.

Thank you Beverly, for the color chart. My 'vision' for this room is to recarpet the LR and DR areas. The carpeting is due to budget. Yes, the doors are dark, and doors and trim are on the paint list. I want to put in 6-inch baseboards.

When you enter at the front door, there is a line of sight clear to the big LR window through a 6' wide hallway. From front door, it runs straight, about 15', to the LR. And then, the path to the slider doors jogs a bit to the right. Yellow brick road, I'm thinking. Would be so fun to actually curve the path to the sliders, but I think I'll put down a laminate. With the planks, I might be able to get a sense of movement, although the edges will be straight. This space has a lot of odd angles, so the carpets in DR & LR will angle along side the path. Lean into the strange is the guiding principle here.

chloebud, this is a great post. Thank you!!

Lyn Nielson, the blogs and comments seem to indicate the white whites tend to dingy/dirty looking in darker corners. If true, I probably should be looking for a bright cream. I know in AZ a lot of people use Navajo White, which runs to yellow. Could be a reason for that, I'll sample it. Thank you!

Paint does very little for improving lighting but better lighting does it instantly .

Patricia Colwell Consulting yes! I'd love some light tubes or can lights but will probably look for a couple of those arc lamps. I also like an uplight but have never deployed one successfully.

You can throw a rechargeable LED puck light into the base of any interior plant and get uplighting.

The floor inside the room and the immediate flooring outside the room must be light to bounce the exterior light into the room.

I would not add any tunnel lights that might increase the heat load in your room. AZ heat is brutal and expensive to cool rooms.

BTW the color on my walls and ceiling in this photo is Foxtrot from Valspar.

What is needed is unnatural light. Paint is not going to do it.

I have the same problem. I’ve been looking at BM super white. Make sure you paint samples or put Sampilize stickers both high and low because it will look different at each level of light. I found this site helpful for comparing colors online before getting samples: Plan-home.com

Ker9 I will look at the link, thanks for sending!

Beverly, thank you for your suggestions and pictures. I like your living room and I see a Monstera in my future with an uplight! Pale Oak was on my radar for a while. I like the Foxtrot as it looks a bit more brown and a bit warmer. I am drawn to warmer colors in general. But it's hot here in the summer. After looking at the paints suggested, I realized I might prefer a paint with some color.

ker9's Plan-home.com is amazing.

https://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-colors/color-families has some lightly pigmented colors in the orange, yellow and green categories that I like.

In the last house there was SW Greige. LR at 20%, BR and hall at 10%. My yellow chair looked great in the LR. A white sofa looked dirty grey against a white wall and looked white against the greige. Greige again would be fine, but a change would be nice.

Thank you all again. I feel more focused, You all have given such great advice!

plan-home.com is a hot mess.

We'll start with HSL and LRV.

HSL is ill-defined and has a laundry list of issues but the biggest issue is HSL does not model human color vision. When you try to apply those values to paint colors, for example, HSL hue angles are about 60 degrees off (average) in every hue family.

And the LRV thing they have is just stupid.

For starters 82% or more LRV does not mean "White" paint colors. Their "off white" category is just as tragically incorrect.

They're so wrong and misinformed about so much it's hard not to feel sorry for them.

@Lori A. Sawaya

I found this comment from you in a different thread also about low natural light:
“You want to choose colors that are cleaner and more vivid than you would think would look good because you need the vividness - the chroma - to bust through the dimness. Try colors that are less gray and more colorful than you would normally reach for and see what happens in the space.”

Does this mean that whites will not work in low light rooms because they are lower in chroma?

Funny that you found this comment ker9! I've been sampling the Alabaster, Navajo White, ,Chantilly Lace and Maritime White. I have come to the conclusion it needs to have more color, like a lot of color. I'm completely stumped again. I'll try Connecticut Yankeeeee's Dimity and Beverly's Foxtrot, and look for a taupe or mushroom. I don't have a vision of a less neutral color on these walls, and I guess I mean a color than isn't tan, beige, brown or greige, but I wish I did.

Does this mean that whites will not work in low light rooms because they are lower in chroma?

Yes. That is the reason many FEEL colors of white do not work in a dim quality of light.

And it is about feeling the energy of the color and light relationship in the built environment.

Typically (meaning not prescriptive or applicable in every case) there are two white/off-white wall color camps.

Camp 1: the focus is the alignment of white or off-white with no specific expectation of what the white looks like. At the DNA level, when colors of white/off-white align the result is a feeling of cohesive and coordinated. And that's where Camp 1 finds comfort in a white-on-white color palette. That layered aspect of whiteness and texture is their conscious, subconscious and unconscious focus.

Camp 1 has no clue what people mean when they say they feel like white dies on the walls in their room. Because a white wall is just one component in what they see as a holistic approach to achieving a style or a vibe. e.g. Shabby chic, farmhouse, shabby-chic-farmhouse etc. aesthetics rarely struggle with white paint colors. Usually, they just pick a color that speaks to them - and - aligns with fixed finishes and/or important elements.

Camp 2: Has a preconceived idea of what the white walls will look like. A conscious, subconscious and unconscious expectation of that color of white/off-white on the walls transforming the atmosphere of an interior or the curb-vibe of an exterior to light, bright, airy, clean, crisp, simple, and straight forward.

And that can be true.

However, in this case, the quality of light is the only other component in this conscious, subconscious and unconscious aesthetic equation. No layers.

Breaking quality of light down into dim, moderate or abundant is the only way to manage this expectation in order to achieve 'the feeling' of white.

Then calibrating Chroma to dim, moderate or abundant is how we do that. That's some of the nuts and bolts behind this statement:

“You want to choose colors that are cleaner and more vivid than you would think would look good because you need the vividness - the chroma - to bust through the dimness. Try colors that are less gray and more colorful than you would normally reach for and see what happens in the space.”

@Lori A. Sawaya - very helpful, as always, thank you!

Is there a chroma starting point and perhaps an LRV range?

@anne - I guess depends on if you want a neutral vs a color and if neutral do you prefer gray or beige/tan leaning yellow, orange, green. Perhaps BM Pale Oak?

About LRV:

I almost feel sorry for LRV. What blogosphere has done with this rather innocuous little data value is stupefying.

Light Reflectance Value is a measured data value that tells you how much light a color reflects. That's it. That's the only thing it does.

LRV has absolutely nothing to do with perceived colorfulness nor does it describe color appearance in any way shape or form. But that doesn't stop people from using it to infer color appearance characteristics. I don't recommend it - do it at your own risk.

CIELAB L* and Munsell Value are the only two data values that do describe how light or dark a color looks.

LRV has two other names in color science. Y tristimulus value and luminance.
Lightness, which represents perceived lightness, is a function of LRV (a.k.a. Y tristimulus value and luminance). It's a cube root function with an offset. L* = 116(Y/Yn)^(1/3) - 16. Necessary to transform LRV into a human-readable notation that tells you how light/dark a color looks.

Is there a chroma starting point

The best and only values to use are Munsell Value and Chroma.

I created these brackets, they are based on my judgment. So, if a White doesn't work, bump up to Off-White or Light Near Neutral, etc.

Whites

Value 9.12 to 10.00

Chroma less than 0.55

Off-Whites

Value 9.12 to 10.00

Chroma 0.55 to 1.15

Light Near Neutrals

Value 8.12 up to 9.12

Chroma 0.1 to 1.00

*These colors are too dark to be considered White/Off-White

Near Neutrals

Value 0.1 up to 8.12

Chroma 0.1 to 1.00

There are bracket shortcut boxes in the filters part of the Paint Color DNA Table. Click the box > hit search box icon and the Table will sort to these parameters/brackets and only show you the colors that fit within these brackets in whatever brand(s) you choose.

Hi all, once again, thank you for your comments and advice. I sampled all kinds of colors and whites, and the paint that held its own any time of day or night, in natural or artificial light, was Alabaster! Decision made. Appreciate you all.

Im so indecisive. I have weathered shingle in my sunroom, with extra white on the adjoining shiplap wall. Then my small living area, and entry with no natural light. Help! What color?

Catherine...You would be better off starting your own Discussion but the Navajo White mentioned is a beautiful color.

Catherine and Trace- i agree with new discussion. post pictures of the space and get Samplize colors. Put them up in different spots for several days so you see effect night and day, sunny and cloudy. Eventually one will make uou smile

Our living room is a color wash in Alabaster, and I know you're loving it, Anne!