Whenever I work with a seller to put there house on the market almost always one of the first things we address about the interior of their house is the paint color choices throughout the home. Some clients have a bold taste, with bright colors adorning every room while other clients kept their walls clean and concise with a nice eggshell white colored on every wall and ceiling in the house. With my bold colored clients, while I always encourage a good accent wall in a few rooms, I tell them they have to take themselves out of the house and make it a clean palette for the potential buyers. Buyers need to be able to walk in and picture themselves in the house with their stuff and if you have chartreuse walls in the living room, some buyers are going to have a hard time seeing past such an intense color. With my play-it-safe clients who appreciate a good beige or white wall, I might recommend spicing things up a bit to give the house a little more diversity. Not everyone wants a completely blank slate so it might be good to check out what paint colors are hot right now and put a few in the home before putting it on the market.
The great thing about paint is it is cheap compared to most fixes you have to do around a home. And, you can get your family or even your friends to help you paint so labor is also cheap if you go that route (though you might have to pay in pizza and beer for the adults, kids, maybe a trip to the ice cream shop J).
So what colors are popular right now? With houses it seems that color palettes are consistently changing and so are what people are looking for when they walk into a place. I also tell my sellers the same thing, you can paint over the walls, cosmetic changes are the easy changes and if that’s all there is wrong with the house then you probably have the right house.
Many people also take in the use of light when deciding on paint colors. Morning light, afternoon light, dusk and evening light can all make a color look a certain hue or change the look of the color completely. If certain rooms get more light than others, it is important to take into consideration how much light the paint will get and how that will affect the color itself.
This year, the ranges of colors dominating the charts are a diverse from soft, pale blues and grays to ruling, rich reds that are sure to capture anyone’s eye. According to housebeautiful.com, these are the 18 interior color trends we have been seeing this year:
Chinoiserie Red
Deep Turquoise
Dark Plum
Windsor Pink
Salsa Dancing (burnt orange)
Courtyard Green (emerald)
Oval Room Blue
Greenery (reminds you of being outside)
Black Chiffon
Stone White
Olive
Shadow (Benjamin Moore’s Color of the Year)
Inner Glow (all shades of yellow)
Dusk (you can never have too much blue)
Ramie (latest spin on classic white)
Cloudberry (lighter shades of purple)
Mushroom (the next neutral)
Poised Taupe
There are so many great colors to choose from when it comes to painting the interior of your home, make sure you go get a few samples and throw them on your wall before committing so you can see the color during the day and during the night. And remember, when buying a house try to look past any paint that might take away from the bigger picture and if you are selling, try to make the home neutral for the next homeowner with maybe a few pops of color for flavor.