How to Choose Interior Design Colors for Your Home

Choosing colors for a home is harder than choosing them for a screen. You live with them every day, they change with the light, and paint, fabric, wood and stone all have to work together. The good news is that a simple process takes most of the guesswork out.

This guide is the practical side: how to build a palette for the whole home, how to divide it within a room, how to read undertones and light, how to test samples properly, and how to keep rooms connected. For what different colors can suggest, such as calm blues or sociable warm tones, see our guide to color psychology.

Start with what's staying

Paint is the cheapest and easiest thing to change in a room, so choose it last. Before picking any color, list what you're keeping: flooring, kitchen cabinets, countertops, tiles, a sofa, a large rug, window frames. These fixed pieces already have colors and undertones, and the walls need to work with them.

• Look at wood floors closely. Many lean orange, red or yellow, and that warmth will show next to cool grays.
• Stone and tile often have a hidden undertone: a gray marble might be slightly green or slightly pink.
• A patterned rug, fabric or artwork you love is a ready-made palette. Pull two or three colors from it.

If you have a photo of a room, a fabric or a piece of art you like, the Palette from Image tool pulls its main colors out as HEX codes you can use as a starting point.

Build a whole-home palette

Rooms that are each lovely on their own can feel disjointed when you walk from one to the next. A whole-home palette solves this. Choose a small set of colors first, then give each room its own mix of them.

1. Pick one main neutral for walls in halls, stairs and open areas. It's the thread that connects everything.
2. Add one or two supporting neutrals, a shade lighter or darker, for rooms that need a slightly different feel.
3. Choose two or three colors that will appear as feature walls, cabinetry, textiles or accents in different rooms.
4. Decide on one trim color for doors, frames and skirting boards, and use it everywhere.
5. Keep the undertones consistent: all warm, all cool, or a deliberate and repeated mix.

Use 60-30-10 inside each room

The 60-30-10 rule, also covered in our guide to creating a color palette, maps neatly onto a room. It isn't precise, but it stops every color from fighting for attention.

• About 60%: walls, and often large rugs or floors. Usually a neutral or a soft, muted color.
• About 30%: large furniture, curtains, cabinetry or a feature wall. This is where the room's character comes from.
• About 10%: cushions, art, lamps, plants, a painted door or a vase. The accent you can change cheaply each season.

You can flip the rule for a bolder room: dark walls as the 60%, light furniture as the 30%, and a metallic or bright accent as the 10%. The idea stays the same. One color clearly leads, and the accent stays small enough to stand out.

Undertones: the hidden color in every neutral

Most interior color mistakes come from undertones. A white, a beige or a gray is rarely truly neutral. It leans toward another hue, and that lean shows up once it's on a whole wall next to other surfaces.

• Warm whites lean yellow, peach or pink. They feel soft and pair well with wood and brass.
• Cool whites lean blue or gray. They feel crisp and pair well with chrome, marble and black.
• Grays can lean blue, green or violet. Greige, a gray with beige in it, sits between warm and cool.
• Beiges can lean pink, yellow or green, which is why two beiges that match on a chip can clash in a room.

To spot an undertone, put the sample next to a sheet of plain white printer paper, and next to the other neutrals you're considering. Compared side by side, the lean becomes obvious.

Light direction changes everything

The same paint can look like a different color in two rooms of the same house. Daylight from different directions has a different character, and artificial light adds its own tint. The notes below are for the Northern Hemisphere; south and north swap in the Southern Hemisphere.

• North-facing rooms get cooler, indirect light all day. Cool colors can feel cold there; warm whites and warmer neutrals help.
• South-facing rooms get warm, bright light for much of the day. Most colors work, and cool colors look softer than on the chip.
• East-facing rooms are bright and warm in the morning, cooler and dimmer later. Think about when you use the room.
• West-facing rooms are cooler in the morning and glow warm in the evening, which can make warm colors look very orange.
• Bulbs matter too. Warm white bulbs push colors toward yellow; cool white bulbs make them look bluer and flatter.

How to test paint samples

1. Narrow the choice to two or three colors before buying samples. Testing ten at once only confuses the eye.
2. Paint large swatches, ideally on sample boards or sheets of card you can move, rather than small patches directly on the old wall color.
3. Use two coats, as you would on the real wall. One coat lets the old color show through.
4. Place the samples on different walls, including one near the window and one in the darkest corner.
5. Look at them in the morning, in the afternoon and at night with the lights on, over at least a couple of days.
6. Hold them next to the floor, furniture and trim that will stay in the room.

Keep rooms flowing

Flow matters most where you can see from one room into another: open-plan spaces, long hallways and rooms connected by wide doorways.

• Use the main neutral in connecting spaces, so every room you step into shares something with the hall.
• Repeat an accent color from room to room in small amounts: a cushion here, a vase or a painted chair there.
• Change color at natural break points, such as a door frame or an internal corner, not in the middle of a wall.
• In open-plan spaces, define zones with rugs, furniture and lighting rather than with several different wall colors.
• Use the same trim color throughout. It's an easy way to make different wall colors feel related.

Example palettes by room

These palettes are starting points. Each lists colors roughly in 60-30-10 order: walls first, then larger pieces, then accents.

Living room

Living rooms are used at all times of day and by everyone, so a flexible neutral base with a richer mid-tone works well.

Bedroom

Bedrooms are mostly used in low light, so softer, slightly grayed colors usually work better than bright ones.

Kitchen

In a kitchen, cabinets and countertops are the 30%, and they're expensive to change. Choose them first and let the walls follow.

Bathroom

Bathrooms are often small and lit by artificial light, and tiles cover large areas. Test colors under the actual bulbs you'll use.

Home office

A home office needs a background that doesn't distract on video calls and stays comfortable through long days.

Preview before you paint

Before buying samples, try your palette in the Palette Visualizer's interior preview. It tints real photos of bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms and more with your colors, so you can see how the 60-30-10 split feels in a room rather than as a row of swatches.

For ideas, the Inspiration section collects interior examples by room and mood. When one catches your eye, open its palette and adjust it to your fixed pieces and your light.

Common mistakes

• Choosing paint first and then struggling to match floors, fabrics and furniture to it.
• Judging a color from a tiny chip under shop lighting.
• Ignoring undertones, so a gray wall looks blue next to warm wood.
• Giving every room a completely different scheme, with nothing to connect them.
• Using a bright, saturated color across all four walls when a muted version would be easier to live with.
• Forgetting the ceiling and trim. A stark white ceiling can make a warm room feel cold.

Good interior color comes from a few decisions made in the right order: what's staying, a small whole-home palette, a clear lead color in each room, and patient testing in real light.