We love a good Britney reference, and we love painting—walls, paneling, brick, even large ceramic roosters. A big part of any project is choosing the right paint color. Paint chips are like potato chips to us: we can’t stop at just one. Benjamin Moore has long been our go-to, and their extensive palette has shown up in nearly every room of our home (Sesame in the kitchen, Moonshine in the living and dining rooms, Proposal in Clara’s room, and Dragonfly on the back of our dining room built-ins). We’ve used their Advance paint for our office built-ins and kitchen cabinets after hearing glowing recommendations from contractors and readers. Benjamin Moore paint even helped with several secret book projects—on walls and furniture—so we’ve relied on their colors for a lot of our work.
So when Benjamin Moore asked us to curate a collection of our favorite colors, it felt like a dream. It still feels surreal to see our header on their site.
After months of development, we’re thrilled to share our Benjamin Moore collection. Our task was to comb through thousands of swatches and select 32 favorites to help people struggling with paint paralysis. Imagine us covering the sectional (poor Karl!) with swatches, arranging and rearranging combos until we landed on a cohesive collection. This partnership is a fun side project—like writing our column or working on a book—but this time we got to play with paint chips, which made it especially fun.
Some colors in our collection are tried-and-true hues already on our walls; others are shades we’ve admired for a long time but haven’t used yet. A few were used for our book, so we’ve seen them on walls and furniture, though those book pieces are still under wraps until publication. While many are excellent wall colors, we’ve also suggested specific applications—trim, doors, or accents—to help you visualize them in different roles.
We especially love using bolder accent colors to enliven a room by:
- painting a media cabinet, dresser, bed, desk, or chair
- creating large-scale homemade art on canvas
- painting a grouping of frames to unify and add drama
- adding color to a lamp base, basket, or tabletop accessory
- painting the back of a bookcase or built-in for visual interest
You can read an introduction to our collection on the Benjamin Moore site, view all of our selected colors, and see them arranged by suggested application. We hope this curated set makes it easier to choose a color without feeling overwhelmed by endless options. It’s still wild to think we’re featured alongside designers we admire—if you’d told us five years ago we’d be on the BM website, we’d have laughed for at least ten minutes.
Also: seeing our mugs listed just under Candice Olson’s on the site was a small moment of pure excitement. There may have been a series of high-pitched shrieks that startled the dog and delighted a certain toddler who joined in.
This project was a joy to work on, and we couldn’t wait to share it. If staring at a wall full of swatches paralyzes you, we hope our curated collection offers a smaller, friendlier set of options to explore. Do you have an all-time favorite paint color—an ideal neutral, a bold hue, or a shade that takes you back to a special place or memory? We’d love to hear about it.