Jasmine Cunningham
I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, on purchases made after following an affiliate link. Creating a whole house color palette, before painting a single wall, was the best thing I ever did for my home.
Choosing wall colors on an as-needed basis caused extra stress and indecisiveness. Because I did the work up front, I know I can use any color from my palette and it will fit right in with the rest of the home.
For example, dark teal appears on the upper walls in my dining room. I used the same color differently in my basement family room on the painted media center.
Every home no matter the size or layout can benefit from a whole house color scheme. It doesn’t matter if your home is an open floor plan or a series of separate rooms.
It seems more obvious to use coordinated colors in an open floor plan or small space, but even in a home with separate rooms you don’t want to turn the corner and have a jarring effect caused by an out of place color.
Here’s the goal: If someone were to see your home as a series of snapshots, each room a separate picture jumbled up with pictures of other people’s homes, you want them to know all of your rooms are from the same house. To make it easier, I created a class called Create a Cohesive Home with Color with video lessons that walks you through this process step by step. All of the fixed elements in your home automatically become part of your whole house color palette.
The fixed elements in your home include trim, cabinetry, flooring (wood, carpet, tile), wall tiles, and countertops (stone, laminate, wood). It’s the most important, which is why I included a 30-minute lesson on Identifying Undertones in my Create a Cohesive Home with Color class.
If the person designing your house did a good job, you should see some trends in the undertones. For example, most of the undertones of the fixed elements in my home are warm colors.
My cinnamon maple cabinetry has a distinctly orange undertone. Once you understand the undertones in your fixed elements, you basically have two options for building your whole house color palette:
I almost always prefer Option B, complementing the undertones, because it provides balance and prevents your home from being too warm or too cold. The remaining steps are like a choose-your-own-adventure for your color scheme (monochromatic, analogous, or complementary).
Popular advice suggests you choose your color scheme based on some sort of inspiration. In my experience, it is better to start with the overall feeling you want for your home and what your favorite color is. Once you know which color scheme is best, you can look for inspiration in nature, interiors, fashion, and fabrics to help you round out your palette. Use one hue for your entire color palette in different shades, tints, and tones.
For example, blue, green, yellow or purple, red, orange. This color scheme is very livable and generally feels relaxing and calm. For example, if your undertone is red, then start with green and use the analogous colors, like yellow and blue. For example, blue and orange, yellow and purple, red and green. They all look white in the paint store, but on the wall next to each other, you will see the difference in the undertones. This will be your go-to neutral color to use in all the connected areas of your home, like open spaces, hallways, and lofts.
A warm neutral will complement cool undertones, like blue, green, or purple. A cool neutral will complement warm undertones, like red, orange, and yellow. I think griege works extremely well for complementary wall color palettes. Because my fixed elements have warm undertones, I can get away with cool wall colors without ever worrying about my space feeling cold. Your favorite color is probably the only one you won’t tire of and the one you are most comfortable risk-taking with because you love it. So, the boldest color in my palette is Plumage, a very dark, saturated teal.
Your bold color might be a lot lighter and less saturated than mine, but it will be the boldest in your palette. In the Sherwin Williams paint deck, they call these Fundamentally Neutrals.
The Fundamentally Neutrals are the blue jeans of paint color. In my home, we chose a charcoal gray called Zinc as our accent color. It is a dark charcoal gray, which contrasts with the lighter blue/gray of our default neutral. We used this dark gray to make our two-story living room feel cozier.
But, that doesn’t mean you are limited to only 5 paint colors in your home. Here are two ways to extend your palette and stick within the 5 distinct color rule: But, our actual paint palette has over 10 colors, because we have a few shades and tints of blue, green, and gray.
The dark gray color, called Zinc, has a green undertone. So we chose a green, called Schoolhouse Slate for my son’s room. This is a place to collect paint swatches and other samples for every room in your home.
Create a key chain of mini paint samples. Because you will be using these colors over and over again in your home, it is handy to have large samples ready to go.
I used to make these on foam core, which warped a bit with the paint, until my friend Heather from the blog Setting For Four, suggested using $1 canvases from the dollar store. Whenever you need to choose a color for a new room, you can bring all your big samples into the space. Use for trim, cabinetry, furniture, and ceilings or anything else you want to paint white, even the walls. Stick with one white color and always keep some on hand for touch-ups.
Works great for small spaces like closets and bathrooms, where you don’t want to choose another color. It runs from our front door through the foyer, up the stairwell, around the second-floor hallways and loft.
I used my bold color, Plumage, above the board and batten in our dining room.
It works best in separate rooms or for a more subtle accent wall. This color should be used sparingly on walls or intentionally to create a certain feeling in a room. If your color palette is blue and green, with orange as a complementary color, only use the orange in an area where the adjacent rooms are blue or neutral, not green.
For example, our accent color is dark gray, called Zinc. We chose it to make our two-story great room cozier. When I wanted to make our light blue master bedroom moody, I used Zinc on the accent wall behind the bed.
Choose shades (darker) or tints (lighter) of one of the three colors or the neutral in your palette.
My favorite trick is to use a tint of the bedroom color in an adjacent bathroom, or in any two rooms that flow together. My laundry room is turquoise, a tint of dark teal.
You can start living your life outside the hardware store paint aisle.
