Off White

Pale enough to open a room, with a yellow undertone strong enough to still read as a deliberate choice. Behr catalogs it as Off White, 73.

76.0 on the light-reflectance scale puts it in the middle third, which is the part of the scale with the fewest surprises. A chroma of 8.5 is enough to register as a real color choice, without the intensity that would force the rest of a room to match it.

This is a color worth testing in the specific room it is going in - cool colors shift more than warm ones do between north and south walls. A good fit for bedrooms and nurseries, where softness matters more than intensity. Dunn-Edwards Lighthouse makes a good second wall color here - different enough to read as a real choice, close enough to still feel related (about 14.3 points apart in light reflectance).

If the brand is not fixed, Vista Paint Bleached Meadow (0376) is the same color by measurement - delta-E 0.71. A satin finish is worth it in a room that needs to be wiped down often, at the cost of showing a bit more of the wall's surface than a flat finish would.

It is lighter than 84 percent of the Behr range. The name is not unique: PPG 1024-1 also sells a color called Off White, and it is not the same shade. Behr lists it in the 0000 series, alongside 9 other colors.