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If you love the peaceful, beachy look white wood paneling brings to a room, then let this office makeover from The DIY Playbook inspire your next home project. Before the shiplap was installed, the entire room was a blank slate begging for a redesign. Bridget Dutkowski, one of the bloggers behind The DIY Playbook, <anchor>documented her hunt</anchor> for the perfect white paint for this room (she ultimately went with Behr's Falling Snow), but after a few months working in a minimalist office, she was ready to introduce some personality.
Finding the Perfect White Paint Color | The DIY Playbook
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# Finding the Perfect White Paint Color for the Office

ByCasey FinnPosted onFebruary 3, 2017July 29, 2024

Happy Friday, I hope everyone is having a great week!! Before we sign-off for the weekend, I’m excited to check-in with some office progress. For those of you who are just joining us, you can get caught up on our plans to transition our current guest room into an office here.

Bridget's bright and sunny guest bedroom!

## The Plan

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Long story short this room used to be our guest room. Because it’s the brightest room in the house and we only use it as a guest room 10 out of the 365 days per year, we decided to transform it into an office that will allow us to get a lot more use out of it. When you live in a 1,100 square foot home, using every square inch wisely is important! Mood board for Bridget's new office! We want it to be bright and full of natural light. 

You can read more of our plans in this post, but here’s a mood board of what I’m envisioning for this space. I want it to be light, bright, minimalistic yet very hardworking.

Office Floor Plan for Bridget's office remodel. This remodel will include a new desk, new rug and a fauxdenza we will DIY!Office Floor Plan

Some of you also mentioned that you would really love to see a floor plan of this space to visualize what is where. (Why didn’t I think of that?!) Here’s a rough sketch of the floor plan of this space and the furniture I have planned (tentatively). With the fauxdenza and shelves, I hope to add our own style and lots of secret storage but before we get to all that fun stuff, we needed to choose a paint color and get to work painting this space.Finding the Perfect White Paint Color was a big part of this process. We were painting over a gray color we never totally loved. 

## White WallsFinding the Perfect White Paint Color - How to Choose? Find out in this tutorial. 

The guest room was originally painted with Benjamin Moore’s “Moonshine” when we first moved in. I liked the light grey because it was very versatile but I was never obsessed. This color showed blue undertones at different times of the day. I love blue but I was going for more of a pure grey in this space and I never felt like Moonshine fit that look. Plus, there were LOTS of holes in the walls from hanging shelves and art that used to be in here, so I knew that whether I wanted to change the paint color or not, I would still have to patch and paint.

I’m trying to test different looks and figure out if I enjoy living with these looks now so I have a better idea of what I want to incorporate in our forever house. One of the looks that I’m currently loving and want to see if I still love after living with it is white painted walls.

I’ve seen so many gorgeous white spaces recently so I thought this “new” office would be the perfect chance to see if that white paint is as good as I think it is in pictures. But believe it or not, choosing the “perfect” white paint was a lot harder than I anticipated!

## Choosing The Perfect White Paint Color

I looked lots of white paint swatches and narrowed it down to my top 3 choices. I wanted the paint color to be clean and bright but also with a warmish undertone. I really wanted it to feel warm and not super sterile because I was afraid that if the color was too bright white, it would look brighter than the trim and doors in this space. I was concerned that this would then make the doors and trim look old and dirty. #notgood

A trick for Finding the Perfect White Paint Color is to Put it next to the trim - that way you can see how the walls and trim will work together. 

So I bought a few samples and painted them next to the trim all around the room.

1. Behr’s Ultra White (TOP)
2. Behr’s Polar Bear (MIDDLE)
3. Behr’s Falling Snow (BOTTOM)

I added each color right next to the closet door, but I also painted this same combo next to the window trim, baseboard, and in the darker corners of the room. I wanted to read the true color in all different parts of the room and at all different times of the day to make sure I was making the best decision I could.

## Behr’s Falling Snow

Seeing the paint next to the trim really helped me narrow down the winner — Behr’s Falling Snow. I loved that this color was white and clean but still seemed like it had a bit of a warm undertone (at least in relation to my trim). The Falling Snow was also the winning contender because it didn’t make the trim look dirty.

We went with Behr's Falling Snow for this project. I love the crisp white color and it worked well with the trim. 

## Painting a Room – Tips & Tricks

You can get a full step-by-step tutorial on how we patched and painted this room here on Zillow’s blog. It was the first time I used bright pink spackle and I LOVED IT. Not only did it seem super crazy to slap on bright pink anything onto our walls, but magically when the spackle was dry the bright pink dried the color of traditional spackle. This made figuring out when each coat was dry super easy, which helped speed up the process just a bit. <— Every little bit helps, right?! Finding the Perfect White Paint Color wasn't easy for this too, but I think I made the right choice and I love how bright it looks now!Now that the paint is dry, I’m SO excited about the bright and clean look of this space.

The walls in our office are painted a new bright white! Now we can start the office remodel. 

## Let the fun begin!

It does seem very plain right now with white paint right next to the white trim, but I’m so excited to add furniture and decor to this space so that these pieces can be the “stars of the show” rather than the wall color.

Finding the Perfect White Paint Color is easy when you know these simple tips and tricks!

Decorating around white walls is very new to me but I can’t wait to give it a try! Does anyone else tuning in have any experience with white walls? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks before we get started.





Next on the to-do list is building a fauxdenza so that our office has lots of secret storage. If all goes as planned, I’ll have more updates on this DIY Fauxdenza next week!

Bridget

## If this was helpful, you might also like:

### Shop the Look: Casey’s Master Bedroom

### B’s Bedroom Refresh Plans

### Home Swap: Tour Sarah’s Home from Room for Tuesday

### Our Guest Bathroom Revamp

### Reader OMG! – My Brother’s City Condo

### Rookie Mistake – Decorating a Rental



Hey there!

I’m Casey Finn, the voice behind The DIY Playbook. I’m a gal teaching you how to design, DIY, and maintain your home…by yourself!





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