I also wanted a color that would be a white that we could use on other things in our house. So if moulding or doors need to be painted white in the future, everything will tie together. And so far, it has worked. Our fireplace and now the spindles on our stairs are both Swiss Coffee by Behr.
Before painting the fireplace, I checked a couple of blogs about how to paint brick. Some of their tips proved to be helpful, a couple of other tips did not. For instance, they said to use a pretty nappy roller. This = good. Also shared, was you can use any finish you want. I chose flat. This = bad. I would now do a satin or eggshell finish and plan to do so in the future when I go over the entire fireplace again. This will make it way easier to clean and won't allow gunk and makeup to settle into the paint.
It was also shared that I didn't need to use a primer if the brick that I didn't need a primer if the brick had already been painted. This = good, though I still needed three coats of paint. After two coats, I discovered that the little pin holes were not filling up with color and some of the chunks also looked odd. I decided to fill them with caulking, then painted the third coat over everything. This help a lot and made everything look smooth and uniform.
The entire fireplace took a coat of paint.
Then we have painted our new staircase moulding and spindles with the Swiss Coffee, for this one we bought the Primer and Paint in one since it was raw wood. I have since read that it is best to do a wood conditioner on the raw wood so it takes the paint better and the knots don't end up coming through the paint color.
