Everything You Need To Know To Find The Best white pigment

Looking for the perfect white paint color? Stop looking at paint chips &#; just follow this one simple trick and you&#;ll get the best white paint color ever.

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White paint is a tricky thing. There are literally hundreds of different shades when comparing all of the main paint brands. It&#;s exhausting to try to figure it all out. So I quit trying &#; and here&#;s what I learned.

Most people have a butcher they love, who will share his best secrets on how to make the best steak ever or that pork chop recipe that&#;s to die for. But me? I have a paint guy. 

I buy a LOT of paint. So much, in fact, that my local paint store gives me a contractor discount. And I&#;m not a contractor &#; haha! They know this and just appreciate that I do all of my business at my little local Benjamin Moore store, so they&#;re good to me. I know all the guys there by name &#; I grew up with the owner and my husband grew up with the paint expert at the store. So Mike is my paint guy &#; any time I need help with figuring out something, I go see Mike. {btw &#; this is NOT a sponsored post}

Our living room was super dark before we gave it a makeover, so I decided that I wanted the brightest white paint I could find. After some research, I learned that Behr apparently makes the ultimate white paint color. I decided to take a gamble and try a paint that I never really used &#; but it&#;s Home Depot &#; how bad could it be? BIG MISTAKE. Although it was supposed to be one coat &#; after 4 coats on raw wood you could still see wood (we had to do some repair work after we ripped out the old fireplace). And on the areas where we had already painted previously with Benjamin Moore, it started bubbling up. There is NO reason this should have happened. We had clean walls and we were applying latex satin paint over latex eggshell. But it happened. 

After a long discussion with Behr, we got a refund &#; then immediately headed to my beloved Benjamin Moore. Mike was at the counter and we had a discussion that went like this.

Me: Yo, Mike! How ya doin&#;, bud? Is there any way that we could add white pigment to white base to get a super white paint?

Mike: You want the best white paint color you&#;ll ever find?

Me: Yes, please!

Mike: You don&#;t want white pigment, you want one drop of black per gallon.

Me: [deadpan face &#; I was sure he was joking] Yeah&#;. ok. Seriously, can we add the white.

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Mike: I&#;m dead serious. Add one drop of black pigment to it and you&#;ll get the best white paint color you&#;ve ever used. Sounds crazy, but I swear by it. 

Me: Say whaaaa? Alright &#; I trust you. If that&#;s what you say is going to be the perfect white paint, then I&#;m down to try it. I need five gallons.

Mike: So we&#;re going to put 5 drops into the 5 gallons. 

Me: Let&#;s do it.

He mixed up the paint, I brought it home and got to work. I&#;ve got to be honest and tell you that when we put the first coat over the Behr white, it seemed a bit gray. But I stayed the course and kept painting. And after two coats when it was all completely finished and dry, he was 100% dead on right. I&#;ll never look at another paint swatch &#; this is now my go-to white paint color that&#;s not really a paint color at all. It was honestly like he held the key to the best decorating secret I&#;ve ever learned. And no bubbling or issues at all. That&#;s why I love this paint.

So that, my friends is how to get the very best white paint color. Go see your Benjamin Moore guy and tell them you want one drop of black pigment into a white base to get the white paint. And if you&#;re realllllly lucky, you might find your very own Mike &#; 

What everyone else has said: Titanium, and there&#;s no getting around it.

Gamblin&#;s Radiant White seems to be popular, but it yellows so dramatically that it turns orange. That&#;s not an anomaly either. All of Gamblin&#;s whites do this. I have an old portrait painted with one of Gamblin&#;s Titanium Whites, pure PW6 Titanium Dioxide, and the whitest highlights have all discolored far more than my lead whites ever have.

Stick with Lukas Titanium White if you need the most opaque white possible. It&#;s pure PW6 Titanium White and it stays white.