Friend, have you ever wondered how the rooms of some houses, be it the home of a friend, or a designer you admire, always just seem to flow naturally from room to room?
When pouring through my favorite design books and examining online photos of talented British designers, I noticed this same phenomenon. It seemed effortless and elusive. Why were these homes so cohesive and calm? How could I create the same natural, serene flow in my home? The answer: a home color palette.
Color is powerful. Color creates a certain feeling or emotion in a space. Knowing how to use color can determine whether a room feels calm and collected or random and scattered. Another light bulb moment for me was realizing that creating a home color palette isn't about following rules or matching everything perfectly. This was a relief! It's about building a family of colors that work well together (wherever or however they are used) to create one story in your home.
From these key discoveries, we developed (and are developing) our home color palette. I'd like to share with you the specific colors we use, and some practical tips for creating your own home color palette. Whether you're starting fresh or trying to bring some harmony to what you already have, I hope this helps. I'll mostly be using examples from our previous home in town, as well as a few from our new home in the country.
The Two Color Families
Before we get into specific paint colors, it helps to understand just a little bit about how colors relate to each other. Don't worry, we're not going to get lost in the weeds here. There's just one overarching concept to grasp: color comes in two families ~ cool and warm. What matters most for decorating is understanding warm versus cool tones.
Warm colors have yellow or red undertones. Think creamy whites, golden browns, orange-y terracottas, yellowish greens. Cool colors have blue undertones. Think crisp whites, icy blues, spruce-greens, silvery grays.
Here's the simple tip that changed everything for me: choose a color palette that's either warm OR cool. Once I understood this, choosing new colors became so much easier! This will help all your colors seem to come from one "family." When you mix warm and cool tones without intention, things will feel jarring and disconnected. But when everything does lean smoothly in the same direction? Magic.
If you've ever stood in front of the color chip section at the paint store, you know there are thousands of colors... Overwhelming. But by choosing either cool or warm, you can instantly eliminate half those color options! For our home, we chose warm tones. Creamy whites, earthy neutrals, soft greens with yellow undertones, and warm blues.
The Importance of a Neutral Base
Every good home color palette needs an anchor. A neutral base color that can show up throughout your home, tying everything together without demanding attention. Think of it as the backdrop or canvas for the other colors and for your decor. For our neutral, that color is Sherwin-Williams Universal Khaki (SW 6150).
It is a soft, sophisticated mushroom brown. It's also a clever chameleon. Depending on the light, it can read as golden, gray, green, or brown, which makes it even more useful. I love watching it subtly change as the sunlight travels through the day.
We've used Universal Khaki in so many places throughout our home. It's on the wainscoting and main walls in our guest bedroom, where it grounds the room and provides a calm backdrop for a gallery wall. All those collected frames and prints could easily feel like visual chatter, but the neutral color unifies. In this room, it reads a soft, mushroom brown.
In our dining room, we painted the wainscoting and trim the same Universal Khaki (UK), and in this space, it read as a greenish khaki. Surprisingly, the UK isn't actually in this wallpaper at all, but because all the colors are warm and muted, your eye is tricked into thinking that it is! Using this lovely neutral in our dining room allowed the wallpaper to shine while also connecting with adjoining rooms for a unifying flow. This does not mean that you need to paint everything the same color for it to "go." Our dining room and kitchen were essentially the same, and the lower cabinets in the kitchen were a rich, grassy green, but they work very well together. We'll talk about actual color after settling the neutral and white decisions.
In our garage-to-sun room makeover, we color-drenched the entire room in Universal Khaki. This means the ceiling, trim, and walls were all painted the same color. We really do like this lovely neutral! The result was a dreamy, light, but cozy space that was easy to decorate and a pleasure to use.
Choosing Whites and Creams
White isn't just white. If you've ever held paint chips up to each other, you know this well. Some whites are stark and cool. Others are soft and creamy. Choosing the right white for your palette matters more than you might think. Since we've chosen to use warm color tones for our home, it follows that a warm white would be the best option. Our "white" is Sherwin-Williams Ivory Lace (SW 7013). It has a delicate candlelight glow to it. Not yellow, not pink, just... warm and soft. It is friendly with all our other colors, and it looks lovely in all lighting, day or night, which is important when you're using it in multiple rooms.
In our kitchen, we used Ivory Lace on the upper cabinets, walls, and ceiling (the ceiling in the adjacent dining room also). It lifted the space and made the room feel brighter and airier. The contrast with the darker color on our lower cabinets was practical, too. Those lowers hid scuffs and daily wear, while the creamy uppers bounced light around. In our new home, we have repeated this classic color combo with great success. Happily, the existing countertops and backsplash were a nice soft sand with warm undertones. Score!
With the two neutrals chosen, we could move on to choosing real "colors." For color, I was inspired by the gorgeous, vintage-looking green used by Miss Mustard Seed in her kitchen. Green is also my favorite color, so I could take action with confidence. This is another tip to keep in mind through this process, when you are stumped: do what you know, do what you've always loved.
Several years ago, when brand-new to remodeling, we were about to tackle our kitchen/living/dining spaces one after another. They were relatively open-concept & I knew every room had to flow with the others... this was paralyzing! Initially, I walked away from the project thinking, "I can't do this." But after thinking a lot, my confidence grew. Classic two-toned green and white kitchens have been a love of mine for decades. Plus, the grassy green Pesto Paste paint color we were considering was gorgeous in all lighting throughout the day. We bit the bullet and painted. And we both loved it ~ so much that we repeated the same color palette in our new kitchen!
Incorporating Accent Colors
Once you have your neutral base and your white sorted out, it's time for the fun part. Accent colors are where your personality comes in!
Our main color is a green called Pesto Paste. It is a glorious green. It feels reminiscent of vintage greens from the 1930s and 40s. Fresh but with an old soul. This green also shows up on our front door, in our pantry, and on the shutters and screen doors on the patio. It's not random, it's intentional repetition. When a color appears in multiple places throughout your home, it feels designed rather than scattered.
Green and blue work well together because they're both dominant in nature. Think of a forest meeting the sky, or a garden after rain. They're natural companions. Blue is our secondary accent color and shows up in lesser amounts. In our tiny bathroom, we used Sherwin-Williams Daphne (SW 9151). We wanted that room to have some weight to it, not too airy or light. The deeper blue gives it presence.
Creating Cohesion Through Shades
Here's something that took me a while to learn. You don't have to use the exact color in every room to feel cohesive. You can use different shades within that color. You've seen the range of colors on a single paint card. If it's a blue card, it may move from a light sky blue to a deep navy.
Universal Khaki is our main neutral, but by using a slightly deeper version of that mushroom-y brown, we could achieve a different, yet cohesive feeling. This is exactly what we did in the living room in our previous home. We wanted to keep the cozy feeling through a darker color. So, we used Urban Jungle, just one shade darker than Universal Khaki.
Same with greens. In our pantry makeover, we used a cousin of Pesto Paste called Koi Pond by Sherwin-Williams. It is a lighter, brighter version. Perfect for adding color, but keeping a long, dark alley space light & bright. The key is keeping your undertones consistent. Our neutrals have warm undertones. Our greens lean slightly yellow rather than blue. Our blues even lean warm with a greenish undertone vs cool blues. This is the key to color unity. When you're choosing shades, hold them next to what you already have. Do they feel like they're from the same family? If something feels off, it's usually because the undertones are clashing.
Real-Life Application: Our Personal Home Color Palette
For starters, you might be wondering how to pick that first color. My advice: don't stress over it. Unknowingly, our neutral and white colors were chosen from the first wallpaper we put up in our guest bedroom. I ended up loving them so much that we used them everywhere (and in our new home)! You could discover your color first by some similar happy accident. Just pay attention to what your eye is continually drawn to. Let me walk you through how these colors actually work in our home.
In our guest bedroom, the palette came straight from the wallpaper. I pulled Ivory Lace and Universal Khaki directly from the pattern. Then we painted Ivory Lace on the upper walls and ceiling. Universal Khaki went on the wainscoting and the main walls where the paneling reached the ceiling. The result is a room that feels calm and collected, with all the patterns and art feeling intentional rather than chaotic.
In the kitchen, Ivory Lace brightens the upper cabinets while Pesto Paste green anchors the lowers. The combination feels fresh and classic at the same time.
Bringing your home color palette outdoors is a guaranteed way to create a sense of unity for your entire home. Outdoors, we used Pesto Paste to cover the screen doors and handmade shutters for our patio makeover.
Our living room was interesting. Walls and ceiling are Ivory Lace, which gave us a great light and airy backdrop. Then we got some bookcases off FB Marketplace and wanted to paint them. I tested our Pesto Paste green on them first, but it fought with our red brick fireplace and competed with the blue accents.
Repainting in Universal Khaki gave us the calmer flow we were looking for with other nearby elements, like our back door. Sometimes you have to try things to know.
Green is my favorite color, and blue is Matt's favorite color. These two colors work well together in nature, so it was easy to see how they would work well with our home color palette. We just had to choose blues with a warm undertone.
Our tiny master bath was the first space to get bathed in blue (sorry, couldn't help the pun!). We used Daphne Blue by Sherwin-Williams and love how it turned out.
We echoed the blue in the accent trim in the shower. Note: We also chose a warm grey for the tiles to keep the harmony in undertones.
In our son's room, we went for two cousin shades of the same blue. These colors are both Sherwin-Williams, with the darker blue being "Delft 9134" and the lighter color "Silvermist 7621." We both liked these colors so much that I'm sure they'll appear in our new home.
It was tricky to get enough contrast between the blues and took three tries to get it right, but we love how it turned out!
Tips for Future Color Decisions
Once you have your core palette established, making future color decisions becomes so much simpler. But here are a few things I've learned along the way.
Always test colors in your actual space. Paint looks different in every room depending on the light, what direction your windows face, and what other colors are nearby (including the floor color!). Get samples and live with them for a few days. Observe how they change throughout the day with the natural light.
If I'm considering a new blue, I'll gather paint chips and compare them with the other colors already approved in our home color palette. Consider your existing furnishings. That sofa isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so your new wall color needs to work with it. Hold your paint chips next to your furniture, your rugs, your curtains, your art. And be patient with yourself. Building a cohesive home color palette doesn't happen overnight. Ours evolved over the years as we learned what we loved and what worked in our specific light and space.
Bringing It All Together
Creating a home color palette is really about making intentional choices that add up over time. It's choosing a temperature direction, warm or cool, and sticking with it. I like so many colors and patterns that sometimes it's difficult to say no, and when I haven't, I've always regretted it. It may seem like having a well-defined home color palette is restricting, but actually, it makes shopping so much easier! So, in whatever order they come, find a neutral anchor that can show up everywhere. Select a white or cream that plays nicely with your neutral. Then add those accent colors that bring personality & still feel like part of the family.
When I walk through our home now, it feels calm and collected. Each room is its own, but they all belong together. That sense of cohesion is worth the thought we put into it. The emotional impact is real.
I hope this encourages you to think about your own home color palette. Maybe you're just starting out, or maybe you're trying to bring some unity to choices made over the years. Either way, start where you are. Notice what colors make you feel peaceful and happy. Build from there. Until next time,
Warmly,
Rachel
