Amy Collier’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
1. High Reflective White:
More reflective than a dialogue with Socrates, more reflective than the exiled Dostoevsky during his sentence in Siberian prison, more reflective even than Jesus when he prayed at The Garden of Gethsemane in the hours before his impending death, High Reflective White blinds you with enlightenment.
2. Polar Bear:
Polar Bear roars onto your walls with ferocity unmatched by other whites. Bring to mind its powerful haunches and fearsome claws when you consider what color to paint Baby’s room.
3. Modest White:
Imagine an Anglo-Saxon virgin so pale, the slightest sight of any man, or any woman, any living being at all whose mere existence implies copulation, introduces a blush upon her cheeks. More modest even, is our Modest White.
4. Neutral Ground:
Finally, a white that doesn’t say anything inflammatory. Other whites, though exciting in hue, risk provocation. Not so with Neutral Ground, a white that will adorn your dining room without starting an argument at the dinner table.
5. Nacre:
At some point in our lives, we’ve all dreamed of living inside a giant room-sized clamshell from which we operate as overlord of all who dwell undersea. Haha. Hahahahaha! Now that mother of pearl lining can be yours without all the horrible iridescence. Make your home into a mollusk with Nacre.
6. Marshmallow:
With all the majesty of the Stay Puft Man who, as the physical embodiment of the god Gozer, once towered over our foremost city and tirelessly marched toward his ultimate goal, so shall Marshmallow march onto your foyer walls
7. Eider White:
A still lake. A slight breeze rustling through the trees that grow upon the banks. A bright flash of seabird on the water. The Eider’s noble plumage. Factories and factories of pillows.
8. Eggwhite:
Perhaps you thought we would serve you the typical white you see when you fry eggs sunny-side up. Perhaps you mistook us for a paint company that plays it safe. With Eggwhite, we bring an edgier color to your kitchen, like you didn’t even eat the eggs because you were too busy having sex against the living room wall (for which we recommend our hue Marshmallow).
9. Origami White:
Forget all you think you know about the paper involved in this traditional Japanese art form. Intricate designs woven together with delicate color schemes? Wrong. Carefully constructed geometric patterns? You bet not. Consider what origami paper is really known for. Find it in Origami White.
10. Reliable White:
There are whites you can count on, and there are whites you can’t. (BEHR’s White Hydrangea, for instance. Who the fuck OKed that? Have they ever even seen a hydrangea?) Running low on cash? Hit up Reliable White. Need a lift? Reliable White will get you there—and back! Not sure which white to paint your walls? Check the Dependable shelf located in the Respectable aisle in the Honest section of your local hardware store, and bring home a bucket of good old Reliable White.
11. Pure White:
Purer than the highest quality heroin you would ever buy from a member of the most inbred of royal families right outside the Vatican. Pure White is the color God would paint heaven.
12. Aesthetic White:
Looking for a white with a recognizable, unique style? Look no further. Some whites just sit around on your walls looking plain. With a bold beauty that makes it unmistakably what it is, so subtle it’s almost difficult to say what special element sets it apart, Aesthetic White breaks the mold with its originality and embodies an aesthetic all its own.
Tags: amy collier, beauty, humor
This really reminds me of the object descriptions in The Sims. You could so tell that whoever wrote the copy for those things was either having a lot of fun or really, really bored. Every single random, nondescript item was somehow world-famous or destined to be a conversation piece in your Sims’ home or isn’t really a chair, it’s actually a sculptural representation of a musical composition which just happens to function as a chair.
Yes! Also, have you seen this? http://kotaku.com/pregnant-sims-can-no-longer-bra…
‘Sims will no longer receive a wish to “Skinny Dip” with Mummies’ well why the fuck did i buy this game then
That is 100% how I’d approach that job.
YES. Some day, I hope I can meet the people who wrote those item descriptions.
I just want to spend all day ‘enhancing’ the descriptions of paint chips now. This is awesome!
also, I really really really liked that every single shade of white sampled visually appears to be the same damn shade of white with different word descriptors printed over it.
I painted Baby’s room Polar Bear precisely because of its ferocity!
White Paint Colors Applied to White People
High Reflective White: Stoner philosopher with dreadlocks
Polar Bear: Gay Icelandic dude
Modest White: Nice Mormon girl
Neutral Ground: Swiss hip-hop artist
Origami White: Really into anime
Reliable White: Your dad
Pure White: Incredibly polite neo-Nazi
Aesthetic White: Ironically racist hipster
My theme for the dining room is Polar Bear, ifyouknowuddamean, and you do.
This article is perfect and this comment is perfect.
YES, perfect addendum to the article, thank you.
So like, I do realize that this is a humor piece, but as a person who is occasionally called upon to name colors for my clients, I would like to submit that this kind of thing is absolutely 100-fucking-percent what I get paid for. “What’s white? Marshmallows. Cool, they’re sweet and squishy and springy, so, sweet and soft in its presence, but blended with subtly balanced undertones that lend resilience to your color palette, this pleasingly pure neutral white offers …”
Neutral Ground is the best. There is so much exquisitely privileged discomfort packed into that blurb.
Also and unrelatedly, there is also a group of clients I refer to in private conversation as “the white people who like white things,” and I eventually stopped working for them when their Artisan Collective produced a vase named after a South African racial slur. WHO DOES THAT WITH THE GOOGLE
I am so glad a real life paint copy writer commented on this!!!!! Yeah, that is what is hilarious to me. The source material is REALLY NOT THAT DIFFERENT from this piece.
And those clients sound awful.
I mostly do furniture, so the paint is incidental to me trying to pretend I’m totally clear on exactly what a Queen Anne pierced splat is. But yeah, you’ve captured the “let’s pretend this is utterly serious” tone SO PERFECTLY here.
Do you ever just make up parts?? Like perhaps a “tront-hook” is “scalloped in the delicate Richard III style common to the region of Moates” ??
Probably you can’t say on the internet. I’m sure you’ve NEVER *wink* done this.
NEVER. The very idea. :p On occasions when I haven’t encountered the terminology in my props background, most of my clients’ branding allows me to just get really preachy and prescriptive about the reader’s home decor choices: “The delicate scalloping is well-suited to framing a rich wall color or complementing rustic linens!”
The whole “If you have no rich walls or rustic linens, what are you even doing here” is left implied.
Do you have any paint writing stories?
I did once, in a moment of weariness, name an entire (small) paint palette after characters in a literary smut novel I’d recently read (Lovers and Beloveds, by Mei Lin Miranda; I recommend it highly). To be fair, they aren’t absurd names, they were ideally suited to the feel of the product line, and the vaguely Norman sound was perfectly on brand … (I always give at least two options for names, so I can generally be pretty sure that even if I theme option 1, they’re never going to end up with an awkwardly consistent result, but it amuses me anyway.)
I was once asked to rename a shade that was originally called “urobilin.” The best I can figure for the origin of this one: There was a bit of product-development advice floating around for a while — I suspect it originated on Etsy — to use Wikipedia’s “List of Colors by Shade” for doing product names, and for a long time “urobilin” was in a prominent spot on the “Shades of Yellow” list. You can see how this would be problematic.
<3 This is perfect.
What were the names in the smut palette???
I Cannot Say. I will say that I was super bummed they didn’t go for Allis blue.
The folks who owned this house before me apparently decorated it in Contemporary Leftover Paint We Got Free From Friends. The staircase to the upstairs was what could reasonably be described as Urobilin. I’d been referring to it as “Pus Yellow,” but “Urobilin” is much more subtle in its revoltingness.
I just knew there’d be someone reading who did this for real. I love this website so hard.
More paint color humor! I love it.
This makes me think of this series of autocorrects on paint colours and they are all GLORIOUS.
My favourites:
Period red (persian red)
Creamy blueballs (creamy blueberry)
Mystic farts (mystic fairy)
Effervescent shitstain (European sunrise)
Perhaps some of these were faked, but trying to imagine what ‘effervescent shitstain’ would look like will forever be funny to me.
Pure White made me laugh so hard I almost threw up. I love you.
Polar bear should really be a clear coat.
Or black, and then seventeen layers of clear until it appears white.
I like this idea even better!
With some tiny thin layers of green in there to give some parts of it an oddly yellowish tinge.
Only obliquely related but talking of naming products…
The modernist poet Marianne Moore was once asked by Ford to think of a name for their new line of cars. She came up with a list that includes:
Thunderblender
The Intelligent Whale
Dearborn Diamante
Utopian Turtletop
Unfortunately they didn’t follow any of Moore’s suggestions and went for ‘Edsel’ and the car sold very badly. (I like to think the two halves of this sentence have a causal relation.) I expect many of you know this already but I was deeply concerned that some of you may not and I hate the idea of people being deprived.
No! I didn’t know this, and I am always happy for more stories (Moore stories?) about Marianne Moore.
I was just wedding dress shopping with my best friend and she asked the saleslady what color exactly the dress she currently had on was, expecting eggshell or cream or ivory.
The woman glared at us and said “White.”
Oh god, lost it at “highest quality heroin.” This piece is pure gold.
white gold?
The folks who owned this house before me apparently decorated it in Contemporary Leftover Paint We Got Free From Friends. The staircase to the upstairs was what could reasonably be described as Urobilin. I'd been referring to it as "Pus Yellow," but "Urobilin" is much more subtle in its revoltingness.
YES, perfect addendum to the article, thank you.
Brb dying here
(Also never looking at Rice Krispies the same way again. NEVER.)
With some tiny thin layers of green in there to give some parts of it an oddly yellowish tinge.
There are at least three shades of white tile in the shower of our apartment and it drives me absolutely insane (clearly they had to replace a tile and didn't realize that there are actually different colors of white tile). They did something similar with the grout (patching with a color that did not match the original).
I'm with your dad on this one, is what I'm saying.
white gold?
I just spent … some time … trying to figure out if they were all the same color or actually different
Oh thank GOODNESS it wasn't just me!
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues- every stately or lovely emblazoning- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?