In short: start from one thing you already love, build a palette of three to five colors around it, split them roughly 60-30-10, check the undertones under your own light, and carry at least one color from room to room so the house feels connected.
Step 1: Start with something you love
The hardest part of choosing color is the blank page, so don't start there. Start with a rug, a painting, a quilt, a favorite piece of pottery, or even a photo of a place you love. Pull three to five colors from it. Because those colors already live together in something you like, they will usually work together in a room.
Step 2: Decide on the mood
Decide how you want the room to feel before you choose exact shades.
- Calm and restful: soft greens, blues and warm neutrals, with little contrast.
- Warm and cozy: cream, ochre, terracotta, brown and deep green.
- Bright and lively: clear whites with saturated accent colors.
- Moody and dramatic: dark walls with warm metals. Our dark academia color palette is one example.
Step 3: Use the 60-30-10 rule
Designers often split a room's color into three parts:
- 60% main color: usually the walls, and sometimes a large rug.
- 30% secondary color: furniture, curtains, bedding, an accent wall.
- 10% accent color: pillows, art, candles, vases and small objects.
It is a rule of thumb, not a law, but it stops a room from feeling either flat or chaotic. Treat wood floors and furniture as part of the palette too, because they count as color.
Step 4: Check the undertones
Most of the trouble with paint comes from undertones, the hidden color inside a neutral. Gray can lean blue, green or purple. White can lean yellow, pink or blue. Beige can lean pink or green. To see an undertone, hold the sample next to a sheet of plain white printer paper, or next to other samples of the same color family. Colors in one palette should share a warm or cool lean, or at least not clash.
Step 5: Look at your light
- North-facing rooms get cool, even light that makes colors look grayer and bluer. Warmer colors usually look better there.
- South-facing rooms get warm, bright light most of the day and handle almost anything, including cooler colors.
- East-facing rooms are warm in the morning and cooler in the afternoon.
- West-facing rooms are cool in the morning and very warm at sunset.
Your bulbs matter too. Warm bulbs around 2700K make colors look warmer at night than they do on the paint card.
Step 6: Understand LRV
Most paint brands list a color's LRV, or light reflectance value, on a scale from 0 (black) to 100 (pure white). It tells you how much light a color bounces back. Colors above about 60 keep a room bright. Colors below about 20 are dark and will absorb light. If a room is small or gets little daylight and you want it to feel bright, look for higher LRVs. If you want it to feel enclosed and cozy, go lower and plan for good lamps.
Step 7: Test before you paint
Never choose from the paint chip alone. Paint large samples, at least two feet square, on more than one wall, or use peel-and-stick sample sheets you can move around. Look at them in the morning, in the afternoon and at night under your own lamps. Live with them for a few days. The color you liked in the store is often not the one you like on the wall.
Step 8: Connect the rooms
A house feels pulled together when the colors relate as you walk through it. Some simple ways to do it:
- Use one trim and ceiling color throughout.
- Choose wall colors from the same family, or the same strip on the paint card at different depths.
- Repeat an accent color from one room as a small accent in the next.
- Keep wood tones and metal finishes consistent where rooms open into each other.
Common questions
How many colors should a room have? Three to five, counting neutrals and wood.
Should every room be a different color? No. In an open floor plan, one main wall color with changes in accents usually works better.
Do warm or cool colors make a room look bigger? Light, cool colors tend to make walls look farther away. Dark, warm colors make a room feel closer and cozier.
Color is half of a room's character. The other half is texture, which we cover in how to mix textures in a room.