White Paint Finder

How to use the white paint finder

1. Pick a brand, or keep all three.
2. Pick an undertone: warm (creamy), cool (crisp) or barely any (the purest whites).
3. Say which way the room faces. North leaves out the cool whites, south the warm ones, as Sherwin-Williams’ room-direction guide advises.
4. Choose the order: brightest first (highest LRV), warmest first or coolest first.
5. Tap a white to choose it, then see it on a wall in the room paint visualizer, or find its closest twins at the other two brands.

What counts as a white

Paint brands do not publish a rule for when a color stops being white, so the finder uses Benjamin Moore’s own whites as the yardstick. Its white-paint guide and its trim guide name 18 whites as warm, cool or pure. A color counts as a white here when it is at least as light as the darkest of those (Calm OC-22, LRV 78 by our maths) and no more colorful than the most colorful (Onyx White OC-74, a CIELAB chroma of 11.3). That gives 464 whites from the brands’ own palette files: 37 at Sherwin-Williams, 303 at Benjamin Moore and 124 at Behr. Sherwin-Williams’ downloadable file is from 2021 and holds fewer colors than its fan deck, so it has the fewest. A color listed twice under two codes is listed once.

Warm, cool or barely any undertone

Benjamin Moore’s guide puts it plainly: Warm white hues have undertones of red, orange, and yellow, resulting in a soft glow and welcoming vibe. Cool whites have hints of green, blue, and violet, resulting in crisp, clean and fresh spaces. Of its brightest whites it says: From hundreds of white and off-white colors, we’ve narrowed it down to Chantilly Lace OC-65 and Super White OC-152. Both have little to no visible undertone, making them two of our “whitest white” paint colors.

Sherwin-Williams’ director of color marketing, Sue Wadden, in its STIR magazine: Warm whites are creamy with buttery or beige undertones, and they work well with other warm colors and neutrals, and with traditional styles, and Cool whites, a beautiful complement to modern and minimalist styles, have blue or gray undertones and pair perfectly with colors like blue, gray, violet, and aqua, as well as other neutrals in the gray family.

Where Benjamin Moore names a white warm, cool or pure, the finder shows Benjamin Moore’s word. For every other white it reads the undertone from the color itself, and says so: a color with a CIELAB chroma under 3 has barely any undertone; otherwise a hue in the reds, oranges and yellows is warm and one in the greens, blues and violets is cool. That reading is ours, and it has a limit worth knowing. Checked against the 18 whites Benjamin Moore names, it agrees on 10 of the 18:

The ones that differ are whites whose undertone is too faint to show in a screen color (Benjamin Moore’s word is “cool”; the screen color has barely any lean), and Simply White and Cloud White, which Benjamin Moore calls warm and whose screen colors lean a touch green. Benjamin Moore mixes paint, not pixels, so trust the can: hold the chip against a sheet of plain white printer paper and the undertone shows.

Popular whites, with the LRV each brand prints

LRV, light reflectance value, is how much light a color reflects, from 0 for black to 100 for a perfect white. The finder works it out from each brand’s digital color. For the popular whites below, the brand’s own printed LRV is beside it, read from the brand on 2026-10-10. Sherwin-Williams’ and Behr’s agree with ours to within half a point; Benjamin Moore prints its whites 1.3 to 3.9 points lower than its digital colors work out, so for a Benjamin Moore white, go by Benjamin Moore’s number.

“(Benjamin Moore)” marks Benjamin Moore’s own word for the undertone; the rest are our reading of the color.

The right white for your room’s light

Sherwin-Williams’ guide to choosing paint by room direction says north-facing rooms receive the least amount of light throughout the day, that With north facing rooms, you’ll want to look at colors that have a higher LRV, and that It’s best to avoid colors with cool undertones since those cool tones will make the room appear colder. South-facing rooms tend to experience consistent warm light throughout the day, so there you’ll need to avoid choosing a color that’s too warm.

So the finder’s North leaves out the cool whites and shows the brightest first, and South leaves out the warm ones. East- and west-facing rooms change through the day: try a white with barely any undertone, and look at the chip in the morning and the evening.

Three worked examples

The brightest white for a dark north-facing hall. Choose North and keep Brightest: the cool whites drop out and 328 whites remain. At Sherwin-Williams the first is Sherwin-Williams SW 7102 White Flour (LRV 87).

A crisp white for a sunny south-facing kitchen. Choose South and Cool: Behr PR-W15 Ultra Pure White (LRV 94) is first. A cool white keeps strong warm light from turning the walls yellow.

The whitest white at Benjamin Moore. Choose Benjamin Moore and Barely any: Benjamin Moore OC-65 Chantilly Lace (LRV 92, Benjamin Moore prints 90) comes first, one of the two whites Benjamin Moore itself calls its whitest.

Common mistakes when choosing a white paint

• Judging a white on its own. Every white looks white on a chip. Set the chips side by side, or on a sheet of printer paper, and the yellow, pink, green or gray in each one shows.
• A cool white in a north-facing room. The light there is already cool and dim; a cool white can turn gray and cold. Sherwin-Williams says to choose a warm one.
• A creamy white in a hot south-facing room. All-day warm light pushes it toward yellow.
• The brightest white everywhere. The highest-LRV whites can glare in a sunny room. In a bright room a softer white with an LRV in the low 80s often looks better.
• Trusting the screen. A screen shows a brand’s digital version of a paint. Buy a sample, paint a large board and look at it in your room by day and at night.

Read next

• Carpet colors for Cloud White walls
• Carpet colors for off-white walls
• Curtain colors for white walls
• White walls with black trim
• Wall colors for white kitchen cabinets