Introducing Barbara - The Best Beige Paint Color
All about our infamous friend
You’ve likely seen the name “Barbra” floating around our social media accounts recently. You might be in on the joke but incase you missed it - Barbra is the name of the custom beige paint color that we are using in our kitchen! In this blog post we’re covering:
How we found her
How she got her name, and
How you can use her in your home!
How We Found Barb
If you’ve been following our kitchen project from the start, you’ll know that we have gone through a LOT of trouble to find the right paint color. Conceptually, we knew we wanted the look of warm off-white walls with a contrasting beige trim and cabinets. It turns out finding the right color for our classic white kitchen, was not so straightforward. The search started with trying to find the best warm whites to sample for the walls, which then led to finding the perfect cabinet color.
Through much trial, swatching, and debating between final color selections, we eventually landed on Sherwin Williams’ Accessible Beige for the cabinet color. It's a perennial favorite and in general, one of our favorite warm neutral paint colors. As with all paint colors - it's hard to find the right paint color, that looks the way you want in a variety of lights. Accessible Beige seemed to have the right LVR ( light reflective value), it has warm tones, and just the right amount of saturation (not too gray). In order to start testing it, we decided to first trial it on our back staircase. You can see that process in this Reel.
On the whole we were really happy with it!...but at certain times of day and specifically upstairs, it was looking a little pink. No shade against pink, we love pink, but it’s not what we were going for. This is the risk you run when you love warm neutrals! As we all know, actual paint colors always look different than the fan decks. We needed something with more warm gray undertones. So, we reconvened, this time focusing on finding a more neutral beige.
// Note: If you paint something and don't love it - don't be afraid to change it! It's like trying something on in the dressing room, if you don't love it there, you're not going to like it more at home.
Behind the Name
From there we moved forward with getting a door sample from our cabinet supplier, Cabinet Joint. They offer a great range of standard gray and beige colors, but none of them seemed to work for us. But, they also offer the option of picking ANY Sherwin Williams color as custom color. We went ahead, with new-found optimism and ordered a door sample in Accessible Beige.
When the door arrived our initial reaction was “OMG WE LOVE IT!” but… it didn’t match the Accessible Beige we had painted in the back stair (where there's less natural light). We knew this was a possibility - Cabinet Joint disclosed that the finished process for Prism paint may vary slightly from the interior wall paint.
So what did we do? Equipped with our latest inspiration, we brought that door to Sherwin Williams, and had a color expert match it! And…it worked surprisingly well! When we painted a sample and compared them, they were exact matches. THIS was our perfect beige color. It's a light beige that creates a cozy, clean and inviting atmosphere.
So now with a custom color on our hands we obviously needed a name for it. She's the heart of the home, a modern beige girly, with so much depth. What were we going to say when people asked us what color our trim paint was? For that we asked all of you and well… I’ll let this TikTok do the talking.
How You Can Use Barbra in Your Home
So yes, Barbra is a custom color BUT that doesn't mean you can’t get the color yourself! Below is the color code and for the best results, bring this into any Sherwin Williams location (although other paint company stores should be able to do this for you, too) and they will be able to make it for you!
// Note: This is the code for a gallon of Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel (our preferred trim paint), but they should be able to do whatever conversion is needed for your specific paint projects!
Now if we can just get Sherwin Williams to make Barbra official 😏. Watch out world, because she's about to be one of this year's most popular colors - dare we say, the next color of the year?!
Are you considering using Barbra for any upcoming paint projects in your home? If you do, please let us know - we're not professional color advisors, but we think she's a pretty good choice - and we have loved seeing Barbra released into the wild!