On ITZEN off-white
Swiss Coffee might be where it all began. Somewhere, somehow, in the wild realm of “what is white?”, Swiss Coffee emerged on the scene and completely dominated for a few decades—at least. Then I remember color theory from undergraduate studies. Warm and cool colors, with warm and cool light shining. What does it look like adjacent to blue? Next to yellow? In this light? In that?
And before I get ahead of myself, are we talking about white paper, paint or porcelain? Digital or physical? Ok, we started with Swiss coffee so let’s stick to paint.
Interior walls
So what is “white?” Ask your best friend and then ask your mother. The definition WILL be different. So what is white to your mother when best friend has resolutely defined the color white?… Well, it must be off-white. (As long as your mother is okay with that.)
However, If you research the color white with Sherwin Williams, you’ll find that they currently have sixty whites to choose from. 6-0! Daunting to say the least?
So what is an architect to do? We’re making the all important decision to paint all of our new studio walls as a blank canvas to set the tone for a future of creativity. We need to decide! After the dust settled, we simply decided to leave white alone and decided to define our very own color. “ITZEN off-white.”
The Process
Relationships fuel circumstances, and sometimes they create really fun opportunities. Sherwin Williams makes some great paint products (and many other coatings that I am often reminded of), but the key is our long time rep Rocky. One day we were discussing the color “white”, and the challenge choosing it was going to be for our new studio. He simply asked, “why don’t we just make your own?” So we did!
We met at our local commercial Sherwin Williams store and Rocky took us into the back. The warehouse has a small but mighty creative nook where it all goes down. Each color cooked up by hand. Rocky told us how he actually started his career doing this exact same thing, mixing paints day in and day out. So he knew the process well and walked us through all the steps.
We made a few off-whites that day. Mixing, making draw downs (somewhat of a lost art apparently), mixing again, new draw downs… until we had about four unique paint samples. It was pretty cool to understand the recipe making process of using a handful of base colorants to mix all colors.
The Result
Our studio is painted completely with “ITZEN off-white” using five different Sherwin Williams paint products. At first glance you’re probably not going to notice, and to be honest on your fifth glance you still may not. And that’s okay. You’re not really supposed to as the differences are mostly performance based. We can talk about that when you visit the studio if you’d like, or not. We can just enjoy conversation, surrounded by the studio’s off-white canvas and an americano.
The only brand on display in the studio.