5 Best Color Combinations to Pair with Teal or Turquoise
(Author note: Originally published February 2020, improved from original!)
Teal is, hands-down, my daughter’s favorite color.
Well, at least it was her favorite color at the time of the original posting of this article! She has since changed her mind, and now pink reigns supreme. No matter, teal/turquoise had a very long run as her favorite.
In fact, she loved those colors so much that she has had two bedrooms in two different houses painted various shades of the tropical shade. Her bathroom is also a light shade of pastel turquoise. When you walk into her space within our home, it is as though you are walking into the tropics–it’s a little too bright for my own taste, but kids’ rooms should be fun!
Working with a vibrant wall color
The effect of painting all four walls of a room a vibrant color is that a person can easily experience color overload. When I finished painting the first wall, I had a moment of pause, where I debated the wisdom of painting all four walls such a vivid shade. I let the color sit overnight, and the next day decided to complete the job. After all, paint color can be changed fairly easily.
Immediately, I realized that we faced a challenge as a result of the wild wall color: We needed to figure out quickly how to decorate the room around that color.
60-30-10 rule of color
Going back to a basic principle of balanced interior design, we would use one color for 60% of the room’s over color, another color for 30% of the room, and 10% of the rest of the room. Given the impact of the wall color, I probably overshot the 60% mark for the primary color! Even so, I applied the principle to her room. White was the 30% color in this equation, because her room had white doors, white trim, white curtains, and white plantation shutters. The last challenge was identifying the 10% color.
For the 10% color, we needed to find a beautiful complementary shade. I began the search for the perfect complementary color by taking a sample of her wall paint to a fabric wholesale outlet. Walking the aisles of fabric rolls, I kept an eye out for colors that contrasted with and brought out the beauty of the wall shade.
The colors that worked best with the paint
Aside from white, which looked clean and crisp against the wall paint, I found several colors that looked very nice against the paint. I purchased decor items in those colors so that my daughter could decide on her accent color.
Here’s what we liked:
- Pink and teal
- Coral and teal
- Navy and teal
- Gray and teal
- Black and teal
We considered each option, but one stood out to her. She loved the coral option because it was bright, just like the wall color. That was the option that resonated with her, and we went with that!
Teal was an easy color to work with, and proved to be quite versatile. One final option for a color pairing is to do straight-up teal and white. The combination looks very nice together and lends itself to coastal-inspired styling, a topic of my next blog post!
See you next time!
