I've never had completely white rooms, but I would think if you use multiple sources of light it would help. Don't just use overhead lighting...use several lamps too. Lamps help create wonderful ambience in my opinion. And they really help brighten dark corners, etc. I use lamps on tables and on my bookcase cabinets too. You might consider sconces too.

You might try soft pink light bulbs as they give a warm glow and make skin tones look better too! Blue light bulbs could work as well altho might look too cold.

Every wall in my home is painted white . . . well, actually a warm cream color. It's been like that since we moved in 19 years ago and I've never had a problem with any of my rooms at night. Hmmmmm, let me think.

One thing I do dislike and never do is light a room via overhead lights. Never. I think they give any room an unflattering starkness. I love beautiful lamps, and always try to get them with 3-way bulb capacity. I have several in each room. If I'm going to be using a room, I like to keep two of the lights lit on their lower settings and the one next to where I'm sitting up higher. The ambiance I get from the glow of low lights around the room is, to me, very attractive as well as comforting.

This is probably not the best of examples, but it's one of mine and it may give you an idea of what I mean. This is an older pic of my living room. Cream walls. Cream linen-blend sofas,white-washed wood ceiling and woodwork, etc. I love how the lamps add warm pools of light around the room. IRL, the light lends a nice golden color to the rooms, not slightly blue as it looks here (which is what I meant by "not the best example"~LOL).

Over on the other side of this same room is our game table. Although this pic was taken while it was still light outside, can you see how the table is lit at night by the warm lamp light? It has a 3-way bulb in it. In the evenings if I'm in here reading, I'll keep it on low to warm up that corner of the room. When we play backgammon or cards here, we'll turn it up higher.

My MBR is mainly various shades of cream and white. Again, not the best pic but we don't even have overhead lights in here. Just one mini chandelier in the corner reading area, 2 bedside reading lamps, one floor lamp at the reading area by the fireplace and one lamp on the dresser.
{{!gwi}}
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Another thought is to also try adding some darker accent colors, if you don't already have any.
Lynn

Lynn, your house is beautiful and your view looks spectacular. The chair in front of the fireplace in your bedroom is warm and charming. I have always been a color person. We have put on an addition in our 1840 home and are renovating many other areas. I'm actually thinking of doing an all white color scheme. A real departure for me. You mentioned that these are the original colors in your home. Do you have any idea what they are? Again, beautiful home!

I'm not expert, but I can tell you when they did the photo shoot of my kitchen the perfect lighting was achieved strictly by the photographer's lights. The windows had sheets taped to them on outside if there was a lot of light streaming in at that moment, no lights were on inside the room. She used reflectors to bounce light softly from other windows into the room, and she had several lights all set up around the room.

They told me people are amazed when they find out that the photographer does not use the home's lights at all. Something about them being different than what they use and therefore they don't photograph right.

So, don't feel bad if your room doesn't look like the ones in the magazines. Nobody's room looks like that.

I think you should check your lightbulbs, and get those blue-ish ones that are true spectrum lights. It's amazing what the bulbs can do to paint color.

I haven't read all other opinions, so this may have been mentioned.

When I lived in apartments and I was young and had the decorating fever. That's me now, minus the apartment and the youth. (lol)

I use to hide cheap little moveable lights aiming them up to the ceiling. I would hide them behind plants, sofa's or screens. I think the lights were probably ten bucks and gave a wonderful ambience.

Jane

Lynn, love your home!

There's white and then there's white....all whites have undertones of some sort. I might suggest that your "white" doesn't have warm undertones.....while Lynn's certainly does.
Linda c

Yeah, live wire oak!

I think that one of the reasons that Lynn's white walls are so warm looking is because of all the texture in her rooms, starting with the walls themselves.

My one-and-only living room has high-gloss white panelled walls -- but lots of dark furniture AND lots of lamps and lighting options.

Works so well at night because of the lighting options -- and even the firelight and candlelight is reflected on the walls!

Lynn's rooms are just wonderful! :) Gorgeous, warm and elegant! :)

LiveWireOak: your breakdown of lighting a room is wonderful and exactly the kind of info PPS7 needed!

And, thanks ladies for the comps on my white/cream rooms. I just wish I was better at photographing them at night because they really are warm and cozy then.
Lynn

LiveWireOak, You are a wealth of information. Thanks for taking the time to share it. It was more than helpful.

LiveWireOak, thanks for the detailed & easy to understand explanation; I've bookmarked it for posterity. Over the years, I've found lighting design to be the hardest area to find decent instructive information - everything pretty much stops after a short discussion of ambiant, task, & accent.

OMG Live, my DH would be ten feet behind me turning off the lights as fast as I could turn them on.

~sigh~ how I love things done correctly!

"OMG Live, my DH would be ten feet behind me turning off the lights as fast as I could turn them on."
Ditto- only it would be me, not DH. :)

Lynn and Jan both have gorgeous white rooms!~~

Live_wire_oak, wonderful comments.