It wasn’t long ago when we used to think that two-toned paint was the way to go for our 55+ communities. We strive to deliver a home that is top quality and what retiring homebuyers are looking for.

Over the last year in Utah, we’ve had to challenge some of our long-held assumptions, as more buyers have been requesting white-on-white painting for the interiors.

What is white-on-white? And how does it affect the homes we sell into the future?

We’ll go into that in a moment, but before we do, know that when it comes to trends like this, what we do now might be different than what we did five years ago, and again different from what we will provide at some future point from now.

Current Painting Trends

What is White-On-White

If you’ve been to any of the Parade of Homes lately, whether in Utah, Salt Lake, or Davis county, you’ve likely noticed a familiar trend in painting styles. Where we once thought that the best looking homes were two-toned, meaning one color for the walls and another color for the trim, we’re now seeing everyone painting the walls and the trim boards the same color, and that color is white.

As we’ve learned in the past few years, there are at least 50 shades of gray. Well, there’s at least as many shades of white now, too. Most of the time, you can’t tell one white from another unless you put perfectly bleached-white paper up to it, then the contrast shows up. Most white interiors are going to be a slight shade of off-white, barely noticeable except to the discerning eye.

So what happened to our philosophy of two-toned paint being superior? Well, I guess trends change. However, we have made some efforts to add our own bit of premium to this white-on-white trend.

Accenting

When your walls and trim all match, the best way we’ve found to add value and pizazz, is to accent paint something else. You might choose to paint an accent wall, do wallpaper, wall decals, or any number of different style choices after you move in, but one nice touch that we are currently doing as a standard, is to accent the doors.

Not only do accented doors provide that extra layer of quality to a home, but they help break up the one-ness of the white. Now, this isn’t for everyone. Some people have still insisted on the doors matching the walls perfectly, and that’s ok. We all have our preferences. While we don’t usually try to adhere to every nuance of every trend, we do try to make a product that will feel comfortable and match the expectations of our buyers.

The tricky thing about accenting, especially on homes like we build, is finding an accent color that falls in line with what the majority of our buyers will like. Accents are sometimes personal. After searching the world of color pallets over several times, we believe that we have one that is in line with current trends, but also able to match a broad range of decorating styles and tastes. It’s a warmer sort of gray, that goes well with the walls, and great with most types of flooring, cabinets, and furniture.

As we get some more model homes built with this new white-on-white style, we’ll include some of them into our virtual tours. You’ll be able to find those on our floorplan pages of our website. As of this article, they have not been done yet. This style is however available to see in our Country View Villas model homes, and soon to be in our Hearthstone Villas community. Our Villas at Waters Edge will remain as our Two-Toned style throughout the construction of that subdivision.