What paint colour is IKEA Hemnes white?

You know the IKEA Hemnes 8 drawer dresser I was talking about last week that was a lot bigger than I thought it would be?  Well, there are a few other things I’d like to paint to match it.  But what paint colour is IKEA Hemnes white?

The IKEA Hemnes White Colour Matching Challenge

I did a few Google searches and the most popular matching paint colour was Acadia White, OC-38, by Benjamin Moore.  But I wanted to see for myself – and it’s a good thing I did, because Acadia White isn’t nearly as close to the IKEA white as I would like.

I went to Benjamin Moore, Home Depot and Lowes and picked up as many white/neutral paint chips as I could find.  It was surprisingly difficult because without the dresser in front of you, the paint chips closest to its actual colour look way off!  Who knew the IKEA white is actually very cream rather than white?

I pulled out one of the drawers from the dresser and started setting up paint chips on it.  I started with the Benjamin Moore paint chips:

You can see above that Acadia White by Benjamin Moore is fine, but it’s definitely not bang on.

So I moved on to the Behr colours:

And then holding the swatches up to the dresser drawer (the photo directly above) you can compare the closest match, which is Clear Moon PWN-30.  Definitely closer than any of the Benjamin Moore colours, in my opinion.

Then I compared the CIL colours, but none of those were even close:

And then the Valspar colours:

The closest Valspar match was 7002-8 and I would say out of all the colours by the paint companies, this was the winner, but even still, it wasn’t bang on.

And then I remembered that all of these hardware stores can do colour matching!  Duh!  I don’t know why I didn’t think of that sooner!?  So out I trekked to Home Depot with the front of the dresser drawer to have the paint colour matched.

And this is what I ended up buying:

So just to compare the paint companies’ colours with the matched paint on the end of the wooden stir stick, here’s what they look like.

Closest Benjamin Moore match, Acadia White, OC-38 (but not really a great match):

The closest Behr match, Clear Moon, PWN-30:

And closest Valspar match, 7002-8:

If you don’t actually have an IKEA Hemnes piece of furniture and you are just trying to copy the look, any one of these would work.  But if you have something in IKEA white, and you want to match it closely, then don’t waste your time trying to find a matching paint colour.  Normally you can just remove a drawer, a shelf, or a leg from that piece of furniture and take it on down to the nearest Home Depot, or anywhere that sells paint, and get them to colour match for you!

Happy painting!