Flat
0-5 units (MPI G1)
Ceilings. This is about as close to an absolute rule as painting has.
Sheen selector
Which sheen, and why that one.
Sheen is the decision homeowners get the least help with and regret the most. Four questions: what surface, how hard it gets used, how wet it gets, and how good the wall under it is. You get a recommendation, the full reasoning, an alternative that is also correct, and what does not belong there.
Use this
Eggshell
- Gloss at 60°
- 10-25 units (MPI G3)
- Gloss at 85°
- 10-35 units
Washability3/5
Hides flaws4/5
The default wall sheen for most of a house, and the one that asks the least of everybody. A soft, low sheen with enough film to wipe and not enough to start mapping drywall seams. Benjamin Moore calls eggshell "infinitely more durable than its namesake," and that is fair. If you do not know what you want, this is the answer that is hardest to get wrong.
Why, for living room or bedroom walls
Eggshell is the safe default and it touches up well. Matte is the better-looking choice and it is what most designers specify now, because a flat surface absorbs light instead of bouncing it, so color reads deeper and truer. Bedrooms tolerate the lower sheen because traffic is low; living rooms trend a step up because of furniture contact. Now the part almost nobody tells homeowners: sheen, color depth and lighting together decide how good the drywall under the paint has to be. National Gypsum specifies a Level 5 finish - a skim coat of joint compound across the entire wall - for critical lighting and for dark or non-flat colors, and requires that Level 5 be inspected with the final lighting and window treatments in place. A deep charcoal in anything above flat, on a wall with a window on the same plane, is asking for a Level 5 substrate whether anybody said the words or not. The paint cannot be better than the wall under it. That is why prep is a line item and not a rounding error.
The defensible alternative
Matte, with a premium scrubbable line
Sheen is a judgement call inside a range, not a single right answer. This is the other end of the range for this surface, and picking it is not a mistake.
What to avoid here
- Matte — High-traffic walls, if the product is a budget matte
- Satin — Walls that have not been properly repaired and sanded
- Semi-gloss — Any large wall plane that has not been skim-coated to Level 5
- Semi-gloss — Kitchen walls - this is the single most common bad recommendation in the trade
- Gloss — Walls, in nearly every case
Two sheens meeting on the same plane.
Two different sheens on one continuous wall will always show, even in the identical color, because the eye reads a reflectance boundary long before it reads a color boundary. This includes touching up an eggshell wall with the leftover satin from the trim, and it includes stopping a sheen change at an inside corner instead of at a true break in the plane.
The full ladder
Six sheens, measured rather than described.
The names are not regulated: one brand’s satin can be another brand’s eggshell or pearl. The only thing that compares across manufacturers is the MPI gloss level, read off a meter at 60 and at 85 degrees.
Matte
0-10 units (MPI G2)
Bedrooms, living and dining rooms, where the deeper color read is the point
Eggshell
10-25 units (MPI G3)
Living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, offices
Satin
20-35 units (MPI G4)
Kitchen and bathroom walls
Semi-gloss
35-70 units (MPI G5)
Baseboards, casings, crown, jambs
Gloss
70-85 units (MPI G6); above 85 is high gloss (G7)
Front doors
What this tool is actually doing
It starts from the recommendation that already exists for that surface — flat on ceilings, eggshell on living room walls, semi-gloss on trim — and then moves it at most one step based on your answers. And it prints every move with its reason. It is not a black box: if you think an adjustment is wrong, you can see exactly which one it was and overrule it.
There is one ceiling it will not cross: on a large wall plane, the tool never steps up to semi-gloss. At 35 to 70 gloss units, semi-gloss works as a raking-light amplifier and finds every nail pop, tape seam and roller lap in the room. Semi-gloss on a wall wants a Level 5 substrate under it. On a normal Level 4 wall it will find everything the drywall finisher left behind.
The common rule, and where it falls short
Ceilings flat, walls eggshell or satin, trim semi-gloss. That rule is correct, and every manufacturer source agrees with all three clauses. It is also incomplete, in specific ways.
It says nothing about the wall underneath. Sheen, color depth and lighting together decide how good that wall has to be. A deep charcoal in anything above flat, on a wall with a window on the same plane, is asking for a Level 5 substrate whether anybody said the words or not. The paint can never be better than the wall under it.
And on trim, the sheen is the less important half of the decision. What separates good trim from bad trim is the chemistry: a waterborne alkyd or urethane enamel levels out brush marks and cures to a hard, furniture-like film. A wall paint in a semi-gloss can, on a baseboard, will look and feel wrong at any gloss reading. Ask what product is going on the trim before you ask what sheen it is.
Where the sources disagree
In two places, genuinely, and averaging them would be worse than picking a side. On kitchen walls, Sherwin-Williams says semi-gloss and Benjamin Moore says pearl or satin. On bathroom walls, Sherwin-Williams says satin or semi-gloss and Benjamin Moore says matte, specifically Aura Bath & Spa. Both positions are defensible in 2026. The tool shows you both and tells you where we land and why, instead of pretending there is one answer.
Juan decides it standing in front of the wall.
The light coming through your window and the condition of your wall are what actually decide it. On the walkthrough he names the sheen and the product, and writes both into the scope.