fifty shades of slipper satin
A Blank Canvas
Recently, Greg and I bought a new house. And with it, all of the excitement of fresh potential has rushed in: how we orchestrate our life, from dinner, to hosting gatherings, to relaxing, to chores, will change. It creates that amazing opportunity to press “reset” on how we do things the way we do, and consider how our environment shapes our daily living. We’ve lived in our current home just over eight years, and during that time our livin’ changed a lot. Once we had kids our needs shifted, and we were “building the plane as we fly it.” The kind of living where, you’re moving the nursery, the office, and the bedrooms around every few months, depending on how old the kids is, what their potty habits are (or are not), when they’re eating, how they’re eating, and most importantly, when and how they’re sleeping. Maybe it’s more like a game of Tetris. Or whack-a-mole. At any rate, we’re erasing the board and starting over - a blank canvas on which to paint every possibility. At least for now.
An Opportunity
The new home is a good one. A forever one. A 1920’s stone house (on my wishlist for so long!) with some great historical details, in a family-friendly neighborhood. However, there’s one issue that we knew we’d have to deal with right away: it’s very dark inside. Short ceilings, dark colors on the walls, and isolated rooms mean that light doesn’t travel far beyond the windows.
The quickest fix to bring light in would be to paint everything white - truly turning it into a carte blanche. Our painters had a sudden opening in their schedule, and with barely enough time to order samples, we knew we couldn’t get too precious about a paint schedule. So, we decided to pick one color, and color-bomb every surface in our house - the walls, trim, ceilings, doors, windows and radiators! Some might call us crazy. But leaving it as-is didn’t feel like an option. We’d previously had success with this approach, and we figured from here, we can step into different color ideas if we feel like it and as we get to know the place. “Paint and play,” as we like to say!
Painting Samples of White
Narrowing down which white would look best in the house, we set about painting samples in each room, trying to get a sense of how it will read in shadow, in light, over trim, against the floors, etc. Next to each other, their individual undertones lit up, making them appear like large Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches with strawberry, pistachio and cream, as seen in the pictures above.
We know, intellectually, color changes depending on a multitude of factors like the light direction, source, the adjacent colors, and the time of day. We also know, intellectually, that the pigments, contents, and “truth” of the color, does not, in fact change. Only our perception of it changes. Sometimes I wonder if Greg experiences “Wimborne White” the same way I do. Can we agree objectively on a color as being the “best” for a room, while experiencing it differently within ourselves? Can we even become absolute, and with precision, determine that it is the same, or different, depending on the conditions at all? We found ourselves in the midst of these questions, forming a kind of case study for color in our home.
One was too pink, another too green, a couple too dull, and one was just right. With little debate, we landed on Slipper Satin, which Farrow and Ball describes on their website as, “a chalky off-white.” It’s so versatile and looked good everywhere we put it! But as you’ll see below, it looks entirely different everywhere we put it, too.
Before diving into the results, some exceptions to our color-bomb that made this experiment and the results even more interesting:
Emulsion - while we didn’t vary color, we did vary the sheen, using “estate emulsion” (super matte) on the walls and trim, and “dead flat” on the ceilings, which you can guess from the name is as flat as they come.
Trim exceptions - there were places where the trim was already a white or buttercream from the previous color scheme, and to save some money (reminder: this is just to give us a blank canvas) and also not get so nutty with the single color thing (Greg kept saying, “it might be too intense”), we left all of the light colored trim as-is.
The Results
Check out photos of the different rooms below. Yes, it’s all technically Slipper Satin, but as you can see, the adjacent colors, light positioning, and size of the room all dramatically effect the way this color reads from one wall to the next!
Insights
Reflectiveness - The ceilings, with the dead flat emulsion, look lighter compared to the walls. This was our intention, but might go against what you’d assume. Pigments actually appear darker when they are glossier, because the reflective aspects where light is cast from create greater contrast to the areas of color the eye perceives, creating an illusion of darkness. Similarly, when there is no reflection, you are left with true pigment in its most diffused & distributed form, with no contrast, making it appear lighter.
Values - The overall value of the color changes from room to room, based on orientation, time of day, and size of the room. Smaller, windowless rooms appear darker. This is common sense, but it’s cool to see in practice. So often we paint a small room a darker color to enhance it’s darker nature, without considering that using the exact same color will do the job on its own.
Color Perception - This is definitely the wildest aspect of this experiment, to witness just how dramatically different the actual color is, when paired next to different color trim (or in the case of the living room, same color trim). The undertones of the paint dance, from chalky white, to grey, to pink, to cream, depending on the trim color they push up against. We tried to get a sense of what would happen when painting our samples, but it really takes painting the entire room to know.
In the dining room, the color takes on a pink putty color next to the white trim. In the hallway, the color looks grey against the buttercream. In the living room, where we painted everything with Slipper Satin, it is chalky, a little creamy, and has a more calming effect than the other rooms. The powder room, where there are no windows and one dim incandescent light over the sink, the color looks almost, dare I say, beige.
Time of Day - I hope it goes without saying that rooms get darker as the sun goes down. But since we don’t live in the house yet, I’m using the powder room color as a sort of bellwether for what we can expect the rest of the house to look like at night time. The richness of the Slipper Satin in the incandescent light is really delicious, and we’re looking forward to getting that effect all over.
As a general rule of thumb, I want my spaces to feel expansive during the day, and cozy at night. High-value whites are an awesome way to achieve this transformation. Farrow and Ball has some great ones, I’m really fond of Lime White, Slipper Satin, and Schoolhouse White, to name a few. They all have strong undertones that give them some weight and added vibration, without becoming a true beige.
