Should you paint woodwork white or match in with paintwork

LlamaKarma

Just organising to have 2 staircases, hall and landing in my house painted. Should I get all the stair rails, skirting etc painted white or should I match them in with the walls. The walls will be some shade of neutral and I have white painted doors already.

Thank you

Doozergirl

There is no rule. I think most people paint their woodwork white but I usually match mine to the colour I'm painting in or a contrasting neutral because it makes part of the design for me. I won't have white woodwork simply because other people do, it would only be because it matched what I wanted.

Traditionally, things like picture rails and skirting weren't features, they were to protect the walls and they would have been painted to match whatever was on the walls, not painted a different colour.

The only white woodwork I have is the same shade of white I have on my walls, which is called Slipper Satin. There is no brilliant white anything in my house.

Do what you like!

Welsh_Totster

I agree with DG above, it's your house paint the woodwork whatever colour you like, after all it's you that has to live with it and look at it! In our last house we had no White woodwork at all, it all had a colour that matched or contrasted the walls. In our new house all the woodwork is White, but give me a chance I will soon change that! So do as you please and enjoy what it looks like once it's done

nolly2009

I was in a house recently where the brilliant white gloss had yellowed over a period of about a year. This might depend on the type / quality of paint used. I tend to use a neutral colour.

nolly

amersall

I use white on doors and skirting, we moved in here 8 years ago and painted a adams fire surround with dulux eggshell white and the doors just dulux white gloss. The eggshell was a bit more expensive than gloss paint but i feel it was well worth the money as it looks new longer, it does not " yellow" so i always use eggshell when i decorate now as i can leave it longer.I think it is what you like or prefer, i just love white with just a hint of colour elsewhere.

LlamaKarma

Thanks for all the responses, have gone for white eggshell on woodwork as there is lots and lots of woodwork (stair spindles & skirting and doors...) and we may want to change the wall colour without changing all that lot!!

diable

Strip it back to bare wood and stain it.

vegasvisitor

I'm glad I read this. We're moving soon and I've bought Dulux white eggshell and I'm going to be painting the walls Dulux natural calico (matt, maybe endurance for the final coat). I'm glad to hear that people seem to like eggshell. I used eggshell in our current living room on the wood, but it's cream so I wondered how white would compare. Our cream stuff still looks fine after 9 years. Our white gloss in the rest of the house has been re-done and could be doing with it again! The white satinwood (crown) that I used in the kitchen has been re-done about 3 times! It seems to just look terrible quite quickly - so don't want to use that again!

I'm going to have to dull down some brightish colours first, I suppose I can do that with white matt (bought the big 10l tub of dulux for ceilings but it will be too much). I could use the white to dull down the colour, then go over it in calico (normal matt) then top-coat in endurance. Saves me buying several tins of endurance as it's quite pricey!