I often get asked what color our trim is painted throughout our house. It’s not secret, I love really bright, large white trim! It feels so crisp and so fresh, but knowing what color to paint trim can be tricky when you want to achieve this look. But I’ve figured out a way that takes the pressure off of trying to decide which white paint color is “the” white paint color for trim. In fact, I’ve done this time and time again in our own house, so today I’m sharing my go-to trim paint color.
Come and see ~
Every couple years or so, I repaint the trim throughout our house. I start in one room, and just work my way through, completing one room at a time, instead of trying to finish the whole house in one day! That would be exhausting. I knew it was time, when the trim around our doorways started looking pretty dingy and the handprints no longer came off by simply cleaning them.
It all started a couple weeks ago, when I found myself getting the itch to do some sort of a spring cleaning / project in our house. Little did I know that this would even spur on a few brand new projects in our house, but I’ll share more on that later!
I was cleaning in our kitchen, and our beadboard backsplash has seen better days. I always try to wipe it down when it gets dirty, but there was no amount of scrubbing that was going to get this looking brand new again, so out the paint brush came! I cleared all of our countertops off and got right to work.
The beadboard backsplash in our kitchen is real wood. We actually installed it circa 2012, and even though I had just begun blogging, I didn’t take any photos of the process, because well, I just didn’t think about it back then. We installed the backsplash first, and then the corbels underneath our upper cabinets so they would appear to look more “built-in”, and be similar to what you would have originally seen when our house was built in 1846.
Since we added the corbels, and they aren’t apart of upper cabinets, we used drywall spackle to fill in the creases. The creases were starting to show again, which was the first time in over 7 years, so I sanded them down, and reapplied. Once the spackle was dry, I sanded it down until it was smooth, and it was time to paint!
I also reapplied some spackle to a crease where we had 2 sheets of bead board butt up against each other, and began to crack over the years as well.
Once everything was prepped, I taped off our countertop, just so I could get a nice full coverage along our entire backsplash area.
My go-to trim paint I use all throughout our entire house is from this ProClassic paint from Sherwin Williams. I never get an actual color, I just walk in and ask for “bright white trim paint“, and this is what they give me.
Since it’s not a tinted hue I don’t have to worry about any undertones coming through on my trim paint, which is known to happen a lot with white paint.
Take a look at the BEFORE & AFTER below ~
I love how bright and clean our backsplash looks now! So fresh, and it makes the whole kitchen feel cleaner too. I even painted the underneath of our upper cabinets, because they were definitely looking pretty dirty.
I’ve shared these in my IG stories before, but never on the blog, our under cabinet lighting. It also helps brighten up our kitchen, and our countertops, which is so nice when I’m cooking. They are from Amazon, and rechargable, and come with a 3m magnetic strip that adheres to just about any surface. I have them saved in my Amazon Storefront HERE, because they are one of my favorite household accessories!
I use this paint on all the trim and doors throughout our house, and it was never let me down. I get my trim paint in a semi-gloss sheen because it looks better on trim, and is easy to wipe down when needed. I made the mistake of using flat white paint once, because that’s typically the sheen I like for my walls, oh-boy never again! It looked so dull, and unfinished – semi-gloss is the way to go!
Below you can see the difference in our downstairs bathroom, which gets the most use out of the 2 bathrooms we have.
Originally the top portion of the walls were painted White Dove by Benjamin Moore, but after repainting the trim this time, it left my walls looking anything but crisp. So I decided to just paint the tope portion of our walls with my trim paint as well. Keeping in mind that I don’t mind the semi-glass sheen in the bathroom since it gets a lot of moisture build up.
And what a difference it made! I still didn’t paint the shutter closet door, because I have a DIY project in mind for that, and hope to get to it over the next couple of weeks.
How often do you repaint the trim in your house? I find it’s one of the secrets to keeping your house looking clean and brand new!
My absolute favorite brush to use when painting trim is my angled Purdy 2.0. I like the angled 1.5 for when I’m cutting in around trim when I’m painting walls, but the 2.0 is slightly bigger and covers my wide trim perfectly, so I can get the job done quicker. *not sponsored, I just really love this brush!*
