Exterior Paint Color of the Year 2021
By: Claire
Benjamin Moore’s Seapearl has been chosen as our top pick for 2021. When it comes to choosing a color for your home’s exterior, your options can feel endless. The color you paint your home can set the tone for your whole exterior design — not to mention it can seriously impact your curb appeal. At brick&batten, our virtual exterior designers have taken the guesswork out of the equation by choosing a color of the year. Our 2021 choice is Seapearl by Benjamin Moore. We love designing homes doused in this dreamy white hue. Read on to learn how to make it work for your home.
In a rainbow of color choices, choosing the right pairings for your home can be an overwhelming task. Don’t go through it alone. The design experts at brick&batten can create a personalized exterior design plan — paint colors and all — to make your home the envy of the block.
Why We Love Seapearl by Benjamin Moore
Of all the colors in the whole color spectrum, the virtual design experts at brick&batten find themselves coming back to Seapearl by Benjamin Moore again and again. We love this creamy white hue as a base for just about any style of home, whether modern, contemporary, or traditional.
Seapearl is an off-white color with a slight gray undertones. This understated warmth makes it a more versatile hue than a plain, stark white. Unlike most warm whites that skew yellow or creamy, Seapearl takes on a slightly gray appearance that brings the color into the 21st century.
Seapearl has an LRV of 77. (On a scale of 0 to 100, the brightest, truest whites have a light reflective value, or LRV, of 100.) Coming in comfortably below a stark, intense white, Seapearl’s slight warmth means it’s not too bright, but it’s still light and airy enough to bring a fresh look to your home.
Seapearl for Every Style
In our years of working with Seapearl in our virtual exterior designs, we’ve found that this hue shines on any home style — seriously! We love it for painting brick on traditional homes or for providing a splash of contrast on more contemporary houses. Because of its warm neutral undertones, it also works great against natural elements, like unpainted wood and warm stone.
Plays Well with Others
Seapearl is a versatile hue. It shines as a base color in a color palette, or it can stand out as an accent color. At brick&batten, we love to use Seapearl as a home’s main color. Its slightly cozy gray tones give this off-white hue more excitement than a standard gray or plain white would. To emphasize details, we like to pair it with brighter, crisper whites like Benjamin Moore’s Simply White.
Or, to take things in an entirely different direction, Seapearl also pairs well with dark, dramatic shades of gray. Playing off of the gray base, hues like Kendall Charcoal by Benjamin Moore provide eye-catching contrast to the neutral base of Seapearl.
We always recommend sampling and testing paint colors before committing. Factors such as natural lighting, undertones, and your property’s fixed elements will have a significant impact on how a color will appear on your exterior. Our friends at Samplize offer extra-large 9 x 14.75 inch peel-and-stick paint samples of the colors we love for exteriors. Order your ‘Real Paint, No Mess’ samples from Samplize here.
Why We Love Benjamin Moore Paints
When it comes to choosing an exterior paint brand, quality is everything. That’s why at brick&batten, we find ourselves reaching for Benjamin Moore again and again. Even the New York Times’ Wirecutter ranked Benjamin Moore as its top paint brand (note: the ranking is for interior paint, but they don’t have an exterior paint ranking).
Painting your home’s exterior is no small task, so you want to choose a durable paint that won’t require touching up (or, gasp, repainting!) in a few years’ time. Benjamin Moore’s line of durable exterior paints is built to withstand years of weather, sun, and Mother Nature’s elements without fading, cracking, or splitting. We also love that this brand creates a consistently smooth and rich paint that gives you deep, saturated colors without having to paint tons of layers.
No matter your style of home, a splash of our color of the year can bring your exterior design to life. Benjamin Moore’s Seapearl is a beautiful shade that provides just enough color while serving as a neutral base for dramatic accents, eye-catching details, and killer landscaping. When you’re ready to see how Seapearl can fit into your new exterior design, reach out to the virtual design experts at brick&batten to get started on your own home face-lift.
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