How to Select Living Room Color that Won’t Drive You Crazy!
Part 3 in my series on choosing paint color
(Author note: Originally published July 2020; Revised & Improved from original!)
I started this blog article series on color selection after a recent job designing a house in the process of being flipped. For this house, the most critical area was the entryway and connected main living room. That area is the first impression a buyer would have upon entering the house, but it lacked appeal.
Design challenges
The custom-built house was a mid-century flip with a long entry hall, which lead into a large living room. The dining room, kitchen, and home office space were all visible from the living room. Therefore, the color scheme had to be cohesive. Before I could build the color palette for the house, the “base” color had to be determined.
Use the anchor of a room to narrow your color choices
Using natural lighting, I narrowed the options for the living room walls. Because the room had indirect lighting with shadows, many colors would have appeared very dark.
We decided to consider light, or less saturated, wall color options, and elected a greige (gray-beige) tint that complemented the fireplace. Fortunately, the fireplace stones ranged in color from gray to brown; greige bridged the gap and agreed with both tones. Our final choice: Sherwin-Williams Wool Skein.
Consider the furnishings
Since this house was a flipped property, there were no furnishings to work around. However, greige works well with both grays and beiges. Because they coordinate with so many color schemes, greige tones are less likely to turn off a prospective buyer.
A few greige colors that work nicely? Benjamin Moore Rodeo (1534), Seattle Mist (1535) and Northern Cliffs (1536); Sherwin-Williams Shitake (9173), Accessible Beige (7036) and Realist Beige (6078).
See my recently re-published article, “Is Gray Passe?”
Unexpected details
Also, we had an additional element in the living room: A built-in bar alcove!
I recommended Sherwin-Williams High Reflective White (7757), because of its lack of undertones. To maintain the style integrity of the room, the builder salvaged a set of folding doors with beautiful leaded glass panes. Since the glass had a bluish tint, it reminiscent of old soda bottle glass. Fortunately, Wool Skein and High Reflective White complemented the glass nicely!
Developing a color palette
The next redesign step was to develop a color palette for the rest of the home. Since the process is fairly detailed, I will include details about color palette selection in an upcoming blog article.
If you feel uncertain about your “anchor” color, Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore both allow you to upload photos and “try on” the color before you commit. In case you don’t have an account, the sites also have sample rooms that allow you to virtually paint with your selected colors.
https://www.sherwin-williams.com/homeowners/color/try-on-colors
https://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/color-overview/find-your-color
While online virtual try-ons are no substitute for testing color samples in the actual room, they give you a rough idea of how a room will appear with the chosen color.
Happy painting!
