Choosing paint colors room by room

Color advice in the abstract is not very useful. Rooms have jobs, and the job narrows the choice.

Bedrooms

The room you see first thing in the morning and last thing at night, mostly under artificial light and mostly in low light.

What works: muted, desaturated colors. Soft greens, greyed blues, warm off-whites, muted clays. Anything that stays calm at 6am.

What to watch: a color that is lovely at midday can look grey and cold under a bedside lamp. Test at night, with the lamps you actually use, before deciding.

Deep colors work well here: a dark bedroom feels enclosing and restful rather than small, which is not true in most other rooms. If you are going to be bold anywhere in the house, a bedroom is the safest place.

Nurseries: the received wisdom about stimulating colors is mostly overstated, but a room a child sleeps in benefits from the same calm palette an adult bedroom does. Consider that the room will be repainted in a few years anyway, which is an argument for choosing something you like now rather than something you think a toddler will.

Dining rooms

Used mostly in the evening, under warm light, often for a couple of hours at a time. That makes it the room where a saturated color pays off most.

What works: deeper, warmer tones (greens, blues, terracottas, and the darker neutrals). They look rich under lamplight and candlelight in a way pale colors do not.

What to watch: greens and blues can go grey under warm bulbs. And a dining room used mostly at night is being chosen for a condition that daylight testing will not show you.

Painting the trim and ceiling in with the walls works particularly well here, because a dining room benefits from feeling enclosed.

Living rooms

The hardest room, because it works all day in every light and it has to sit with the most furniture, art, and materials.

What works: mid-tone neutrals with a clear undertone rather than a dead grey. They hold up across the day and let the contents of the room do the talking.

What to watch: this is the room where a large sample matters most, because it has the most competing colors already in it: flooring, upholstery, a fireplace surround, a television.

If the room has a strong architectural feature or a lot of art, quieter walls are almost always the better decision.

Kitchens

Cabinets carry the color decision more than walls do. If the cabinets are changing, choose them first and let the walls follow: see cabinet painting.

Hallways and stairs

Choose these first, not last. They touch every other room, so they are the constraint on the whole palette rather than a leftover decision. A light, neutral connector lets the rooms off it differ without the house feeling incoherent.

Across the whole house

You do not need one color everywhere. You need colors that do not fight where they meet, which is a question of undertone, covered in how to choose a palette and how color changes a room.

Our design and color guidance visit covers this room by room, with sheen as well as color.