Ode to Cloud Dancer

I thought it was a joke when Pantone named "Cloud Dancer" the color of the year for 2026. White? Really? And I still think it's one of their weaker choices for lots of reasons. However, we recently embarked on two relatively quick touch-up projects that both required white paint (neither of them actually Cloud Dancer) so I guess maybe this really is white's year to shine for us.

Our first project was tackling the upstairs hallway. We painted it back in 2010 by ourselves and really struggled with how to paint the section that extends over the stairs using rollers on wands. Because we couldn't get up close to edge the line where the ceiling met the wall, we just painted everything a single color/finish. Did I record what that color/finish was? No, I did not. However, while I don't remember the exact finish (it was probably matte or satin), I do remember the color. Because there was none. Those were the days when we thought "white" meant "untinted" and so the white was VERY bright. The colors in the cans are not meant to be used as-is. And so that was how it remained for, well, 15 years.

Being the hallway, the walls and doorframes took a lot of abuse, plus we had to screw gates into the walls in order to babyproof--hardware that we left up even though the gates had long since been removed. Some of the paint had peeled off when we removed the paint sample stickers we had put there for one of the kid bedrooms (the light being more even than it was in the green room). Plus a new smoke detector and new doorknobs meant that we had to paint to new lines. Even if I had been happy with the original white walls, it was time for a refresh:

(Note that photographing these and getting the white-balance correct due to the light and shadows was next to impossible, so squint really hard and pretend that all of these pictures show the exact same color paint, because they should.)

This time, we hired professionals. It was a quick job for them to patch up the holes from the screws in the walls, caulk around that light fixture on the ceiling that always looked like it was not quite attached, and actually paint things in different finishes. This time, of course, we tinted the paints. We went with Benjamin Moore's Simply White in eggshell for the walls and semi-gloss for the trim and doors, plus standard ceiling paint. Simply White was what we had used in the formerly green nursery and we liked the way it had come out.

Obviously the pro team had fancy ladder and things to help them get to all the corners we couldn't. And much better tarping!

Here's the newly refinished corner where we had previously had screw-holes from our baby gate. Also gone were all the scuffs and scratches.

The ceiling light, freshly caulked. It's hard to tell but the white of the ceiling is indeed a slightly different color from the walls, which is how it's normally supposed to work.

And the hallway itself, with glossy, bright white doors and trim and our new doorknob hardware to match (almost) the rest of the house.

It was a subtle change that probably only I cared about, but it brought me joy (or at least reduced my annoyance) and was well worth the price and brief inconvenience.

That was project one. Then a few months later, we tackled another white space that was past due for an upgrade. The downstairs hallway!

We'd already done one sort-of upgrade, also in 2010, replacing the rug once and adding some wall hanging. First we'd done a clothesline of pictures and then we eventually put up framed art. But we never touched the walls, and so they were the original white we moved in to. Because it was painted over knotty pine, we could see knots that came through the paint, and had never even switched out the sad painted-white-to-match switch plates:

I had already removed the pictures from the walls and the sad switch plate on this side, but you can see the carpet (new in 2010) that was also due for an upgrade:

And here:

Nothing really wrong with it except our lives did not mesh well with such a light colored rug, plus the rug was looped and the cats were rough on it. What absolutely prompted the need for this project was this (also visible in the first hallway picture above, if you knew what to look for):

Can you see it? This time, the white balance isn't playing tricks on you. The doors were a completely different color than the walls. The door upgrade we made in 2024 while the addition was being built meant that the doors and the doorframes were the new, glossy white of our primary suite, while the walls were who-knows-what. It drove me crazy for almost 18 months. If this picture doesn't make it obvious, take a look at the next one (fast-forwarded to painting in-progress):

There was something else too. We had to upgrade our Nest thermostat due to the old one no longer being supported. And of course it wasn't the same footprint (wallprint?) and left us with an unpainted panel and a hole:

Some woodworking was required. D drilled out the hole to make it more even:

Then wedged in a wood circle that matched the dimensions.

There was other woodworking to be done. We had inherited a house that evidently used to have a basement door, which the previous owners had removed (which makes total sense--there's nowhere for that door to swing). But the hardware was still evidence on the trim:

D used his CNC machine to machine-cut out a plate to cover the strike plate:

The other side of the former door had carve-outs too:

 

Woodworking done, then it became my turn. The corners and wall edges, plus a few random panel edges needed caulking, plus of course I had to spackle the new wood inserts to blend them into the wall.

And then it was time to paint. Did we use the same color we had for the upstairs hallway? Of course not! That would have been too easy. The doors and trim had already been painted Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace, the white we had chosen for the addition, so we were committed. As I noted in previous posts, it turned out to be a tad too white for our taste, but we were not about to repaint all the doors in the hallway to adjust it, so Chantilly Lace it was. Eggshell for the walls, semi-gloss for the trim. We didn't prime first in most places, but we did prime over the new wood inserts and also on all the knots that showed through the previous layer of paint. They may make their way to the surface again eventually, because we didn't purchase an alcohol-based primer, but at least then we can take action again and have the right paint color for on top of it. We didn't paint the ceiling because it was in good shape, so I guess potentially that could be something we have to deal with later also.

We also bought a new rug, moved where we were mounting our Dyson hand vacuum, and put in brushed nickel light switch plates, to make the whole space look nicer. The rug is Ballard Designs' Antelope runner in blue. Hopefully easier to hide inevitable stains...

Basement door? Nope! Just regular wall trim:

The hallway isn't a place we spend a lot of time in, but it is a place we pass through often. I'm happy that it looks so much more polished and thoughtful now. Whites for the win (though we are evidently never going to have a single white base color in this house...)