Choosing interior paint color combinations for your home can be a daunting task. Painting walls, ceilings, cabinetry, and other accents can be a big project so you want to make sure you’ve got it right. And when you realize that any given paint color combination can make a space feel bigger, smaller, cozy, cool, modern, vintage, timeless, natural, industrial, and about a million other adjectives that will affect the way you feel about your home—it can put even more pressure on.
But with the right information backing your decision, we’re confident that you can pick the perfect paint color combinations for your kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room, and anywhere else you feel like wielding a brush and roller.
What Paint Colors Go Well Together?
Picking a beautiful paint palette means learning how to choose paint color combinations that go well together in certain spaces and applications in your home. And there are a few ways to go about discovering what will be just right for you.
Start by choosing a monochromatic, related, or complementary color scheme. Using the color wheel, find a hue that stands out to you and adjust the tone, value, and saturation until it feels just right for your space. Then decide whether you want to round out your color palette with hues in the same family for a calming monochrome effect, hues directly across the color wheel (complementary) for starker contrast and more richness, or hues right next to each other for more natural (related) pairings. Benjamin Moore actually has excellent resources for this process and may be a good place for you to start.
Find inspiration in a favorite pattern or piece of art. Another way to begin picking the perfect paint color combination is to use a favorite pattern or piece of art as inspiration. Is there a dominant color that you could pull out for an accent wall or something more subtle within the pattern that could become the foundation of your space on the walls and ceiling? Then other colors in the piece can round out the rest of your paint palette and decorating scheme.
Consider how lighting and paint colors affect each other. Is your kitchen full of large windows? Is your bathroom small and dark already? Do you have two open rooms that run into each other? Remember that color and light are both very relative concepts. A paint color that feels purely blue in one light setting may come off as purple in others, while that same hue may look grayer when situated next to another large swatch of color. Make sure you test your tentative choices in their true surroundings before committing to your exact paint color combination.
Whichever route you take, it’s probably best to at least touch on a bit of each process in order to ensure you’ll be pleased with the outcome and really do your home justice with the perfect interior paint color combinations.
Best Paint Color Combinations For The Kitchen
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
For years kitchens have been ruled by purely white paint colors—the most popular kitchen paint color for good reason! But color has come back to the kitchen in a big way with exciting paint colors for kitchen cabinets and beautiful two-tone paint colors for the kitchen. But lest you start imagining the bright reds and oranges that made waves in the early 2000s, let me assure you that the most popular paint colors for the kitchen are now soothing and earthy, even when bolder saturations fill the room.
Blues, greens, and warmer whites, often mixed with stained wood are the best paint color combinations for the kitchen right now. And honestly, they’re not likely to go out of style any time soon. The breathe-easy hues make a working kitchen feel more naturally inviting and comfortable, even when the moodier end of the blue-green spectrum is in play. The bonus is that they can often camouflage kitchen messes and mishaps a little better than some other colors.
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Best Paint Color Combinations For The Bathroom
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
The most popular paint color for the bathroom is probably still classic white. That said, there is rhyme and reason to adding a nice calming gray to your master bathroom and a splash of color to a kid’s or guest bath.
Black and white is one of the most popular paint color combinations for the bathroom for its timeless elegance. But don’t be afraid to go bold with black paint in the bathroom, either. It doesn’t just have to be the accent color in an otherwise purely white space. Think black for the walls, or even go for a black bathroom vanity. Just make sure they’re countered with enough light to ensure balance in the room.
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Blue and green are also popular paint colors for the bathroom. They’re versatile, earthy, and fresh enough to bring a little nature into a typically confined space. You can even add a fun coordinating wallpaper or other artwork to enhance the effect.
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
If you’re looking for a more spa-like bathroom retreat, we suggest sticking with a light gray or subtle green combined with white. These paint color combinations create a nice relaxing effect in the bathroom.
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Best Paint Color Combinations For The Bedroom
The bedroom should be a place of rest and relaxation, so we’re partial to somewhat neutral paint color combinations in that part of the house. Grays, taupes, blues, greens, and even peachy pinks mixed with white or cream paint make a solid foundation for a bedroom that can be changed up every so often with different decor and bedding patterns and styles.
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
One of the most fun places to add a splash of color can be your custom built-in closet. There are endless ways to add personality to a perfectly personal area of your home, like highlighting your favorite accessories with a dose of pink or creating a man cave of a closet with deep navy.
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
While it can be tempting to go for a bold statement in your master bedroom, just make sure you’re choosing a paint color combination that ensures some longevity and is balanced well with the right light and decor.
Best Paint Color Combinations For The Living Room
Most people tend toward tamer paint color combinations for the living room, as it’s often the space that makes the first and biggest impression to most visitors to your home. Honestly, we don’t disagree.
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
The most popular living room color is white because it can be accented by beautifully painted or stained trim, other materials like brick and stone, and then filled out with versatile artwork and furniture as styles, or even homeowners, change.
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
Designer: Christopher Scott Cabinetry & Design
But just because white is a good choice, doesn’t mean you can’t go for a bolder paint color combination in your living room. You definitely don’t want something jarring like lime green or fire engine red, but you could try a deep navy or blue-ish evergreen with white wainscotting so the room is saturated but not overwhelmed, a charcoal gray wall with dimensional architectural detailing, or even a pretty lavender splashed on every wall for something pretty but bold.
No matter what paint palette you choose for your home, look for quality inspiration in the Christopher Scott Cabinetry portfolio and follow us on Instagram and Pinterest for the latest in cabinetry and interior design!