Studio McGee
Choosing the perfect white paint color for interiors and exteriors continues to confound many. White is and will forever be the most popular neutral paint color. It’s classic, traditional and modern all at the same time and the nuances of the exact color chosen will help you decide which kind of white is right for your project. Benjamin Moore, with its over 3400 paint color choices offers many, many whites and off-whites to choose from.
Swiss Coffee is one of Benjamin Moore’s most popular whites.
While it’s popular to talk about undertones the correct terminology is really color family. All colors exist as some version of a particular color family. This means that whites that seem creamy or blue or green don’t actually have those undertones. They literally live as part of those color families. So without further ado let’s talk about Swiss Coffee.
Take a look at the characteristics of Swiss Coffee. This Colorgraphic from Land of Color gives you all the solid numerical facts about Swiss Coffee, not someone’s subjective, often incorrect view on what the color is and appears as! (I’ve seen people call it a green white. No!)
Swiss Coffee is clearly and squarely in the yellow color family. It’s a warm white. That’s why it’s perceived as creamy. Creamy = yellow. There is visible evidence of the color family this white comes from. Its Value out of 10 is 9.13 which makes it bright. It’s LRV or Light Reflectance Value which measures the reflectivity of a color, is 82% out of 100 which makes it light-ish. It’s Chroma is 6.2 so there’s enough colorfulness there to experience the creamy yellowness of it.
Land of Color
But colors are experienced in combination with the other colors around it. So around darker, deeper colors it will be perceived lighter and more white than it is and combined next to clearer, more neutral, less colorful whites like Benjamin Moore’s Chantilly Lace you will perceive the creaminess more.
Swiss Coffee for Exterior House Color
Amy Krane Color
Swiss Coffee makes a beautiful color for siding and sometimes trim (depending on what color it’s combined with.) On a historical house in particular the softness of the white helps reinforce the vintage quality of the home. In fact, no style home exterior looks best in cold blue whites. It’s just too stark outdoors with all the natural light.
Ramage Company
As we see in this example, when paired with a whiter trim the creaminess of Swiss Coffee is very evident.
Swiss Coffee works well with many hard finishes.
As a warm white, Swiss coffee works with almost every imaginable wood tone. The browns of the wood are complimented beautifully by the yellow in the white. Whether it’s walnut, oak, pine or birch they make a wonderful combination. When choosing natural stone for countertops and backsplashes Swiss coffee works with most stones. But as always, be careful when mixing similar types of whites because if they’re too close but from different color families they can clash. With colder white stones, like statuary marble or many quartz counters which attempt to replicate marble, be careful. A clear neutral white that doesn’t lean too cold will pair well but a colder blue white will not.
Jodi Mockabee
In this soft white kitchen, Swiss Coffee is paired with a whiter (but still yellow based ) white, Benjamin Moore’s Simply White. These two combine well but don’t just make that assumption. You need to test the two whites together. The brighter walls and ceiling emphasize the creaminess of Swiss coffee. It works!
Sarah Brinie
Again Swiss Coffee on cabinets here. With the addition of brass and dark wood in this kitchen our attention is taken off of the fact that a colder white counter and backsplash has been paired with the warm white. It works here because there are so many color finishes in the room. If it was only Swiss coffee with the white and gray marble it would work less well.
Swiss Coffee with brick.
Juniper Creek
Isn’t this gorgeous? The softness of the white with a peachy brick color is superb. Both warm, but different. It’s a great white for the tones that brick comes in: red, orange, brown and tan.
What Benjamin Moore whites combine well with Swiss Coffee?
The best Benjamin Moore whites to combine with Swiss Coffee include: Chantilly Lace OC- 65 , Simple White OC- 117 and Snowfall White OC-118. They don’t compete with the yellow in the Swiss Coffee.
What kind of rooms does Swiss Coffee work well in?
Swiss coffee will work in every space in your home! While a white is never my first choice for a Northern exposure room as a warm white it will help elevate a room that gets northern light where bluer whites will look dead and dull. In a room with southern light it will look expansive and bright. In east and west rooms it will take on the characteristics of that kind of directional light as well. No matter what room you try it in makes sure it doesn’t clash with the colors you’ve got there.
Allison Campbell
