Select an exterior image to test colors for your outdoor space. Try to match the style of your house with the image using the filter to see the best results. At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s hard to find the best paint color for your house’s exterior. White is a classic, but choose the wrong shade and you’ll end up with a very expensive mistake. We wanted to take the guesswork out of choosing the best white paint for your house, so we asked the architect and designer members of our Professional Directory to share their vetted shades of exterior white paint. They’ve painted countless houses over the years, and know what works. Here, they generously share their 10 favorites. What’s your go-to shade of white paint? Tell us in the comments below. Swatch photographs by Katie Newburn for Gardenista. Above: Top row, left to right: Benjamin Moore Brilliant White; Benjamin Moore Simply White; Farrow & Ball All White; Benjamin Moore White Heron.

Bottom row: Sherwin-Williams Pure White; Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee; Benjamin Moore Linen White; Porter Paints Atrium White; and Benjamin Moore Cloud White. Above: On this house in Connecticut, Brooklyn-based O’neill Rose Architects used low-luster Benjamin Moore Brilliant White, which principal Devin O’Neill calls “a standard that always looks good.” The firm worked with Donald Kaufman on the palette for the house, and chose Donald Kaufman Color DKC-44 in semi-gloss for the porch and ceiling. Above: Interior designer Meg Joannides of MLK Studio in LA recently completed this Brentwood Park home. On the exterior, she used Sherwin-Williams Pure White, a true white that barely hints toward warm. The charcoal gray shutters are painted in Benjamin Moore Onyx. Above: Architect Tim Barber chose Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee for this new house in Santa Monica. The color is also a favorite of SF Bay Area–based designer Nicole Hollis. Above: Donald Billinkoff of Billinkoff Architecture in NYC rarely uses any other white than Benjamin Moore White Heron.

Says Billinkoff, “In bright light it is warm and in low light it is bright.” Above: NYC-based 2Michaels worked with midcentury antiques dealer Larry Weinberg in choosing Benjamin Moore Simply White for this outdoor room on Martha’s Vineyard. christmas tree ornament mobile for saleInterior designer Kriste Michelini also recommends this shade.exterior paint color for house Above: LA-based DISC Interiors painted the exterior of this Loz Feliz home in Crystal Haze from Dunn-Edwards. beach house decor bathroomThis shade has the deepest tan inflection of the paints recommended here. Above: SF Bay Area designer Nicole Hollis chose Farrow & Ball All White as her pick–the whitest white of our recommendations.

In this image from Farrow & Ball, the door and metalwork are painted in Pitch Black. Above: Nashville architect Marcus DiPietro chose PPG Porter Paints Atrium White for the exterior of this modern, Japanese-influenced home in Oak Hill, Tennessee. Next to Linen White (below), Atrium White is the second warmest of the bunch. Above: NYC-based Steven Harris Architects painted this Upper West Side townhouse in Benjamin Moore’s Cloud White. Photograph by Elizabeth Felicella. Above: SF Bay Area-based landscape architecture firm Pedersen Associates admires Benjamin Moore’s Linen White, shown here on a house in Mill Valley. Says principal Pete Pedersen, “Here in Northern California, the quality of light is such that you need to take a little off of the whites to keep from too much reflective glare.” Linen White is the warmest of the 10 whites shown here. Looking for a shade of white to paint an indoor room? See 10 Easy Pieces: Architects’ White Paint Picks.

We also consulted architects for their picks for exterior shades of gray and black. This is an update of a post originally published September 11, 2013. ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,Deciding which colors to paint the outside of your house is daunting (big commitment!)—so we asked the pros for help. Here, top designers share their go-to hues for a home’s siding, trim, and front door. Try one of their perfect pairings. Paint pricing: Behr Premium Plus exterior paint, from $29 a gallon. Benjamin Moore Regal Select Exterior paint, $55 a gallon. Dunn Edwards Evershield Exterior paint, from $44 a gallon. Farrow & Ball Exterior Masonry paint, $100 a gallon. Sherwin Williams A-100 Exterior Acrylic Latex Paint, $40 a gallon; All Surface Enamel Latex Base, $60 a gallon; Emerald Exterior Acrylic Latex Paint, $73 a gallon.Fear is a feeling, not a fact.The famed ‘Painted Ladies” of San Francisco grew out of the city’s 1960’s counter-culture movement. Rocker John Mellencamp might like little pink houses for you and me but he might be one of the few.

Just ask 39 year-old Frederick De Worken, who works in software sales in Austin, Texas, about growing up in Amarillo. “When I was a boy, my grandmother decided to paint our house Pepto Bismol pink,” he said. “I think my grandma was going for the Bay Area colorful pastel look (but) let’s just say it didn’t catch on.” While most realtors recommend repainting the interior of a home with neutral colors prior to selling, a jarring color on the exterior can rob your house of needed curb appeal. It can take a little over a minute to come to a conclusion about a house, said Jeremy Lichtenstein, a realtor with RE/MAX Realty Services in Bethesda, Md., and often more than half of that can come from an exterior color. “One time the builder went with a mustard-colored exterior, Lichtenstein said. “That was a mistake and I make sure none of the builders I work with ever make that mistake again.” Lichtenstein tells his clients that white, tan and gray shades for an exterior home color translate into positives vibes like “shelter” or “safe haven” while brown tends to signal security.

Sandy hues, he says, translate to comfort and “warmth.” A blue house, he said, is also universally appealing, and even red can work, in small doses. Purple, yellow, pink (sorry, John Mellencamp) and orange tend not to work, unless the buyer is very specific about what they want. And it’s not just the exterior curb appeal that counts. The Seattle-based real estate site this summer analyzed the color schemes in close to 50,000 homes sold over a 10-year period starting in 2006. After accounting for location, price, size and age of the home, Zillow determined that homes with yellow kitchens, often in hues of creamy or wheat yellow, yielded the highest sale premium ($1,360 above expected values for example in Portland, Ore.). Wall colors painted in other earthy tones like sage green or dove gray were also present in top-performing listings, Zillow said. While dark colors never fare well on the interior come sale time, Zillow noted specifically that colors like slate gray or terra cotta sold for sometimes close to $1,100 less than expected.

In addition, not having a color in the kitchen also had a negative impact on a home’s sale price. Homes with white or eggshell-colored kitchens also sold below expectations, the real estate research firm said. “Warm neutrals like yellow or light gray are stylish and clean, signaling that the home is well cared for, or that previous owners had an eye for design that may translate to other areas within the house,” said Svenja Gudell, Zillow’s chief economist. Going gray might be the trend for 2017 exteriors, but you shouldn’t always follow what’s trending. , an online broker referral site, says that “gray is the trending design color at the moment,” compiling what it notes are some of the biggest paint companies featuring gray tones, such as Santa Ana, Calif-based paint supplier Behr’s recent essay called “Life in Gray.” And earlier this year, Cleveland-based Sherwin-Williams the largest U.S. retailer of paints and painting supplies, declared that ”Poised Taupe” is the 2017 “new neutral” color for the interior, based on a survey of homeowners where 40% selected the corresponding color.

Still, HomeLight warns that gray, especially in rooms like kitchens and nurseries, may not work, noting one French university study in 2014, not surprisingly, showed “gray is linked more with sadness, negativity and unattractiveness than any other color,” HomeLight said. Nevertheless, homes in the Dallas area that had living rooms painted in dove gray sold for $1,100 more than their counterparts in other colors, Zillow said. And a bedroom in Houston, painted in pale green or khaki sold for $1,300 more than other schemes. By comparison, a deep-brown colored bedroom in Houston knocked out that advantage and cost sellers $240 at close, a swing of more than $1,500 to the downside, Zillow said. Keep in mind, too, the color schemes in your neighborhood, both inside and out, matter more than whatever color-of-the-month is trending. “Be sure to evaluate the home’s surroundings to determine what’s most popular in your market,” RE/MAX’s Lichtenstein says. That might be tough for Peter Dale, a computer programmer in San Francisco who lives down the street from one famous house with a tiger painted on the front.

(the Tiger House however is stunning on the inside) Dale however shrugs it off. “It’s the Haight…” speaking of the legendary counter-culture neighborhood in San Francisco, which was the birthplace of the hippie movement in the 1960’s. A house painted to look like a banana might work in Rio De Janeiro, but probably not Main Street U.S.A. The Haight-Ashbury also famously boasts the “Painted Ladies,” a row of Victorian homes built in the late 1880’s on Steiner Street in the Lower Haight across from Alamo Square that is featured in the TV show “Full House” and dozens of others shows and movies. The actual home for the exterior shots used in the ABC sitcom Full House (and its Nexflix sequel “Fuller House”) in August sold for $4 million San Francisco artist Butch Kardum famously painted his Victorian home on the block in intense blues and greens in the early 1960’s and while initially it was reviled by the neighbors, others in the neighborhood eventually followed his lead.