paint colors in our home

One of the cheapest and quickest ways to change the look of your home is with paint. It’s a fairly easy element to change too. Choosing colors, on the other hand, can be hard. It’s easy to get overwelmed when trying to choose colors for your home. I try to follow a few rules that make it easier for me when picking paint colors:

1) Stay on the neutral side of a color. If you love blues, pick a color with subtle hints of blue – like a gray blue. Or pick a completely neutral color that works well with blues – like a warm beige color. You’ll still be able to work in your blues but as an accent color instead.

2) Think about how your home flows. Changing the colors too drastically from room to room breaks up the way your home feels. Similar color shades and tones keep a continuous visual flow.

3) Look at your existing pieces as a guide. If you plan on keeping your furniture or artwork, use these as a guide for colors that would look best paired with these pieces. Your walls don’t need to “match” furniture, artwork or curtains, but they should compliment them – or work well visually with them.

When we bought our home over 11 years ago, we immediately painted almost every room. And it really transformed the look of our home. We use Benjamin Moore paints – they’re great quality and I love their colors. Our walls are a satin finish, and all the trim is semi-gloss. Here’s a breakdown of the colors in our home:

We used Monroe Bisque – a warm sandy beige color – in our living room and whitened up all the trim and chair rail with Benjamin Moore’s Pure White.

We continued the Monroe Bisque through our hallway and into our dining room. We have a chair rail and square trim detail in both spaces. We painted the top Shelbourne Buff and continued Monroe Bisque on the bottom. We also painted inside the trim detail with Shelbourne Buff. I like Monroe Bisque better than Shelbourne Buff. It’s a little more neutral and less yellow-y but they look good together. They also look good next to the kitchen color – see below!

Waynesboro Taupe is my favorite color, like of all time! Like ya know? It is such a unique color and looks slightly different depending on the time of day. I tell everyone to use this color.

My office was painted a very dark pine green when we moved in. I liked the richness of the color but we lightened it up a bit and gave it a more contemporary tone with the Courtyard Green. It has a more muted yellow base and it works well with our red-toned wood furniture.

Our master bedroom walls are painted Bradstreet Beige. It looks great with the touches of orange and pale blue. But I am really itching to paint a stencil on one wall like I did in my sister’s home office redesign. See that post here.

I love, love this Polar Ice color. It’s so serene and calming and I thought it would work well in our master bath. Plus I use this color as an accent in our bedroom so it connects the two rooms nicely.

These three colors remind me of a sports team and are great for a boys room. The red border is fun and adds a nice punch of color.

This was originally our kids’ nursery so the gray blue was ideal. But when our son #2 wanted this room, we decided to keep the color and add dark gray, navy and white accents to tone down the wall color.

oh how I love this room!  I wish I had a before picture but it had beige walls and a floral border painted all along the top. We picked these mossy greens – which are actually from Millennium Paints – as a little unexpected palette for a young girl’s room. They look great with her bedding and curtains {pink, white and green polka dots}. And the large horizontal stripes make the room appear larger and really define this room.

What are your favorite paint colors? Send them along – I’d love to see them!