The Paint Colors Our Designers Keep Coming Back To
If we had to name the question we get asked most by clients, it'd probably be a tie between "how much does a kitchen remodel cost" and "what paint colors do you actually use?"
Nobody warns you how complicated picking paint is. From a distance, it sounds like the easiest part of the whole project. I'll just pick a color I like. You grab a fistful of swatches at the paint store, tape them up on the wall, and an hour later you're staring at five almost-identical whites trying to figure out why they all look slightly different and which one is actually right.
Then you paint a sample patch. The patch looks different. Then you paint a second wall to compare. That looks different too. Then the morning light hits and now everything's reading warm. Then the afternoon hits and now it's reading cool. Then your friend comes over and says "I'd go with the other one" and you want to scream.
This is the part of design that's genuinely hard. Color is sensitive to lighting, to neighboring colors, to what time of day you're looking at it, and to your house's specific quirks. The same paint color can look great in one room and totally wrong in another, and most homeowners don't have the time or repetitions to know which colors are stable across conditions and which are going to surprise you.
Lucky for you, we do have those repetitions. Our design team has painted hundreds of homes — kitchens, primary suites, powder rooms, exteriors, you name it. And after a few years of trying things and watching what holds up over time and which colors keep making us happy on the third or fourth project, we've narrowed it down to a short list of paint colors we keep coming back to. Project after project. Year after year.
So let's dig in. Here are the colors our team can't stop using — and the principles that make them work.Remodeling Is Mostly About Trust
When you boil it down, hiring a remodeling company isn't really about hiring trades or coordinating a project schedule. It's about handing over the keys to your house — sometimes literally — and trusting a group of people you barely know to come into your most personal space, take it apart, and put it back together better.
That's a wild act of trust. And it's why "best remodeling company" can't really be measured in square feet built or projects closed. It has to be measured in something more human: did the people who hired this team feel taken care of? Did they get what was promised? Did the work hold up after the crew left?
That's the standard we hold ourselves to. And it's the standard you should hold any remodeling company to before you sign anything. Because the difference between a remodel that becomes a great memory and a remodel that becomes a horror story usually has nothing to do with the budget. It has everything to do with the team.
Why Whites Are the Hardest Color to Get Right
Before we get to the list — a quick word about whites, because this is where most people get stuck.
White is not one color. White is a vast family of colors that all happen to live near "white" but each have a slightly different undertone — yellow, blue, pink, green, gray, beige. Those undertones don't show up clearly in the swatch. They show up enormously on the wall, in different lighting, against your floors, next to your trim.
A white that reads "crisp and clean" in a north-facing room can read "yellow and dingy" in a south-facing room. A white that looks "warm and welcoming" next to wood floors can look "muddy" next to gray tile. The same color genuinely changes character depending on its surroundings.
That's why people grab samples and feel like they all look different. They do all look different — and the only way to know which one is right for your house is to test the actual paint, on the actual wall, in the actual lighting you'll live with. Tiny cardboard swatches don't cut it. Pinterest screenshots definitely don't cut it.
What helps is knowing which whites are reliable performers — colors that have a friendly, predictable character across most homes and don't have any weird tricks up their sleeves. That's what this list is for.
Why We Built It This Way
When Jamey and Jimmy started 6th Ave, they had both been on the receiving end of bad contractor experiences. The kind where the timeline triples, the price doubles, the communication evaporates, and you finish the project hating your house. They wanted to build the opposite — a company where the people doing the work would be people they'd be proud to send to their own mom's house.
That meant building it as a team, not a roster of subs. We have full-time construction project managers, designers, draftsmen, and trade leaders on staff. They go to lunch together. They come to the same Christmas party. They walk into your project as a unit, not a hodgepodge of strangers who met that morning.
It also meant designing the company so that design and construction talk to each other. Most remodeling companies have construction in-house and outsource design (or vice versa). At 6th Ave, both live under the same roof. Your designer and your construction lead are sitting two desks apart. They walk your project together. They solve problems together. Nothing falls through the cracks because there are no cracks — it's one team.
And it meant being a one-stop shop. Brokerage, lending, design, construction. Because most remodeling decisions are also financial decisions, and most financial decisions are also real estate decisions, and trying to coordinate four different companies through a major life change is exhausting. We do all of it under one roof so you don't have to.
That structure is the whole reason we keep getting named "best." Not because we're perfect (we're not). But because we built the company to make doing right by the homeowner easier than doing wrong by them.
Our Go-To Whites
These are the five whites our design team has trusted across project after project. Each one tells a slightly different story, and the trick is matching the white to the feeling you want the room to carry.
Sherwin-Williams Greek Villa. Warm and welcoming, but never too yellow. This is our pick when we want a white that feels soft and inviting without tipping into cream or beige territory. Works beautifully in north-facing rooms that need a little warmth, and it pairs gorgeously with wood tones, brass, and natural materials. If you've ever walked into a home that felt instantly cozy and you couldn't quite tell why, the walls were probably something in this family.
Sherwin-Williams Alabaster. Soft, balanced, and classic. This is the most versatile white on our list. It plays well with almost everything — modern, traditional, transitional, farmhouse, you name it. Slight warm undertone, but neutral enough that it doesn't fight other warm tones in your finishes. We use this one a lot when clients say "I just want a nice clean white" and don't want to overthink it.
Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace. Crisp and clean without feeling cold. This is the white you reach for when you want a real, true white — one that pops against dark hardwood, contrasts cleanly with bold cabinets, and gives a room a fresh, gallery-like feel. It's a touch cooler than the Sherwin-Williams whites but doesn't read blue or harsh. Perfect for modern spaces and rooms with great natural light.
Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee. Cozy and lived-in. This one has the most personality on our white list. It's a little creamy, a little warm, and feels like a house you've already been living in for years — in the best way. Beautiful in older homes with character, in nurseries, in primary bedrooms where you want softness. Pairs incredibly with linen, wool, and warm woods.
Sherwin-Williams Shoji White. Subtle warmth with just the right depth. Slightly more pigmented than a true white, with a soft, sandy quality that works beautifully when you want walls that feel substantial without feeling colored. Great for kitchens with cool-toned counters where a stark white would feel too clinical, or for whole-home "every room one color" applications where you need a white with enough character to hold its own.
The trick with whites is testing them in your actual space, painted in big patches (not little swatches), and looking at them at multiple times of day. The right white for your house depends on the light you have, the floors you have, the trim you have, and the feeling you want the room to carry. Any of these five is a great starting point.
Why Cabinet Colors Are Where Kitchens Get Their Personality
Now let's talk about cabinets.
Of all the decisions in a kitchen renovation, cabinet color is probably the single biggest move you'll make. It's the dominant visual element — bigger surface area than walls, more visual weight than counters, and it sets the tone for everything else. Get the cabinet color right and the rest of the kitchen falls into place. Get it wrong and you'll feel it every time you walk into the room for the next ten years.
A few principles before the list:
Too light, and cabinets can fall flat. Especially in big kitchens or rooms with a lot of natural light, a too-pale cabinet reads washed out. Too dark, and they can feel heavy. Especially in smaller kitchens or spaces with limited light, a deep dark color can close the room down. The sweet spot for most homes is somewhere in the middle — a color with enough saturation to be a color, but not so dark it eats the light.
Texture and finish matter as much as the color itself. Matte vs. satin vs. semi-gloss completely changes how a color reads. We typically lean toward matte or low-sheen finishes — they look more sophisticated and they hide fingerprints better.
Cabinet color and wall color are a duet, not a solo. The two need to be picked together. A "wrong" cabinet color is often only wrong because of the wall it's sitting next to. A great pairing of cabinets and walls makes both look better than either would alone.
Our Five Favorite Cabinet Colors
These are the ones we reach for over and over because they always bring a space to life.
Benjamin Moore Hale Navy. Bold and timeless. If you're going to do a colored cabinet — and you should at least consider it — this is the safest "bold" choice on the market. Deep, classic navy that reads sophisticated without being trendy. Looks gorgeous with brass hardware, white walls, marble or warm-toned counters, and basically any wood floor. We've used this on probably twenty kitchens and it has yet to disappoint us. It's the kind of color that's still going to look right twelve years from now.
Sherwin-Williams Oil Cloth. A moody neutral with depth. This one is harder to describe — it's a deep, smoky, slightly green-gray that reads as warm or cool depending on what's around it. The kind of cabinet color that makes a kitchen feel layered and intentional, like someone thought about it. Works beautifully in dark or moody kitchens where you want depth without going full black.
Sherwin-Williams Swiss Coffee. Soft and classic. (Yes — same name as a Benjamin Moore color we love, different brand, slightly different formulation.) This is for clients who want a quieter kitchen — cabinets that feel intentional but don't shout. It's a step warmer than a pure white, with enough body to feel like a real color choice rather than a default. Beautiful in farmhouse-leaning kitchens, in classic transitional spaces, anywhere you want softness.
Sherwin-Williams Natural Linen. Warm, earthy, and easy to live with. A creamy, slightly tan-leaning neutral that's been having a quiet moment in our work over the last year. It feels grounded — like a color that belongs in nature — and it pairs gorgeously with wood, with sage greens, with terracotta tones, with any of the warm-leaning palettes that are showing up in interiors right now.
Sherwin-Williams Tate Olive. Grounded, organic, and elegant. If Hale Navy is the safe bold choice, Tate Olive is the interesting bold choice. A muted, slightly dusty olive green that brings real personality to a kitchen without feeling trendy. Looks incredible with brass, with walnut, with creamy whites. We've leaned into this one more and more over the last couple of years and we keep loving it.
Five cabinets, five different stories. The right one for your kitchen depends on the light you have, the counters and floors you're pairing it with, and how you want the kitchen to feel day to day.
Some Pairings We Love
Picking a single color is one thing. Picking the combinations is where great rooms come together. Here are a few of our most reliable pairings:
Hale Navy cabinets + Greek Villa walls + brass hardware. A classic. Warm, layered, timeless. Works in almost any house.
Tate Olive cabinets + Natural Linen walls + warm wood floors. Earthy, grounded, sophisticated. Reads modern without being cold.
Swiss Coffee walls + Hale Navy island + black hardware. A two-tone kitchen that gives you the best of both worlds — bright airy walls with a bold anchor at the island.
Chantilly Lace walls + Oil Cloth cabinets + black or polished nickel hardware. Modern, moody, dramatic. Great for clients who want something a little less safe.
Alabaster walls + Tate Olive cabinets + brass hardware + warm marble counters. This is our current favorite. It's getting a lot of work right now.
You can mix and match. The point isn't to copy these exact combinations — it's to see how the colors play together when they're chosen as a set, not in isolation.
At the End of the Day, It's Your House
Here's the part we always remind clients of when the color conversation gets tense: this is your home. Not ours. Not Pinterest's. Not your mother-in-law's.
We have our favorites — colors we've earned through hundreds of projects, colors we know how to trust in DFW light, colors we've watched age well and photograph beautifully and pair gracefully with the kinds of finishes most clients are working with. We're happy to tell you what we'd pick. But none of that matters if you walk into the finished room and the color doesn't feel right to you.
Color is more personal than most design decisions. It's not really about what looks good on a screen or in a magazine. It's about how your home makes you feel the moment you walk in after a long day. Some people want soft and quiet. Some people want bold and dramatic. Some people want warm and lived-in. Some people want crisp and gallery-clean. There is no wrong answer — just the answer that fits how you want to live in the space.
The way we see our job is this: we're not here to tell you what to like. We're here to help you find the version of what you like that actually works — that holds up in your house, in your specific light, against the floors and finishes you're already living with. To take the overwhelming universe of options and narrow it down to a few thoughtful choices we already know will look great. To save you from the months-long sample-paint-spiral most homeowners fall into.
If you're in the middle of picking colors right now and want a second opinion, our designers — Kayla, LB, and the rest of the crew — would love to think it through with you. Whether it's a full renovation or just a Saturday repaint of the living room, we genuinely love this conversation.
And if you're just looking for inspiration, browse our portfolio. You'll see a lot of the colors above showing up across project after project — and now you know why.
Pick something you love. Live in it for a while. That's how a house becomes a home.
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