BENJAMIN MOORE SELECTS ITS COLOR OF THE YEAR FOR 2016

COLOR OF THE YEAR - SIMPLY WHITE OC-177

Time to acknowledge Benjamin Moore's color of the year 2016. In the past the color picked has always had a more terminal feel. The colors have been trendier. This year's selection is hard to disagree with, I mean who doesn't love white? Simply White OC-177.  It's not a harsh white. It never looks muddy or dingy. It's not the white your teeth turn when you smile in a room lit by black lights.
Here's how Benjamin Moore describes it: "It works equally well with cool or warm palettes and retains its neutrality, remaining as constant as possible under different light sources."

According to interior designer Darryl Carter there 179 shades of white. So many amateurs think that white is just white.  Well think again and listen to Muriel Blandings from the 1948 film, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. "Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white. A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white". Guess how many swatches of white had to be painted on the wall to get just the right white. Sometimes you have to cover the walls of a room with a myriad of two-foot squares of different whites to get just the right one, the one that wears during all times of the day and with all sorts of different artificial lighting.

So as winter approaches and our northern landscape prepares to don its coat of winter white here are some rooms that have embraced white in all its various shades.

Here is a palette of soft whites that absorb that little hint of green in a room that flies from a flock of perfect white geese to walls that look like they contain a touch of moss

The muted white of an antique bust rising above a painted high-gloss white wooden floor contrast to the linen whites crumpled over a club chair and breezing through the fluttering drapes

White ice is reflected in every element in this dining room where texture plays an important part crackling on the walls like a frozen lake in the midst of snow soaked valley

In contrast to the icy  cool whites there's a sense of serenity implicit in warm white. It sooths and comforts and brings summer into a room

There has always been a correlation between white and cleanliness. The minimalist nature of white appearing as the absence of color makes a space seem larger and more expansive and definitely striped of dirt and clutter.

A touch of blue makes a simple room chill when the temperature outside is quite the opposite

Hot white sizzles on the beach. There's no sense that inland mud would ever destroy the purity of this space built on the sand's of this Oceanside property

Cool clear whites mixed with driftwood inspired whites compose a suite so inviting who would want to leave.

There isn't a color white can't live with and compliment. Try to imagine this red with anything other than white

There isn't a style that wouldn't be comfortable housed in an envelope of white. There's a touch of pink in this traditional white that fits nicely into the historic nature of this space.
















THE GALLERY

The Unmade Bed, 1957
Imogen Cunningham, photographer
Represented by Lumiere Gallery, Atlanta