Beige paint might as well be a toxic poison, because around here, it elicits just as many negative reactions as a typo. I get it. Who wants their walls to look like a giant bandaid? But, like most things in life, the right beige, in the right place with the right friends, has a chance at happiness.
Before we get down to paint colors, let's start with basics. First of all, beige furniture— particularly beige microfiber— on beige wall-to-wall carpet against beige walls, will do nothing for you or your mood. "Depressingly drab" is a nice term for that look. However, if you like working solely in neutrals, think about where you can add a variety of textures to bring out the soothing qualities of the beige. For example, find a fuzzy cable knit throw, a slubby linen toss pillow, a chunky rug, a sparkly chandelier, grasscloth matted pictures, a reclaimed wood coffee table with some authentic patina — suddenly the beige-on-beige won't seem so soul-sucking.
Also, think about adding pattern, whether it be tone on tone in neutrals or a riot of color. Beige can be the perfect backdrop for combining patterns without overwhelming a room. Look to the room above, designed by Marya Karlton, of Karlton Kelly Design and house tour fame.
If you prefer a sleeker look, then sub out the heavy textures for shots of color. In this case, I'd go for high contrast, and personally, I prefer to bring in at least one cooler tone like a turquoise or an emerald green. A soft yellow against a beige will look sad. However, a deep yellow can look stunning, or a rich gold can look sophisticated.
So whether it be color, texture, pattern, or all three, the key to keeping beige from ruining your day is providing a bit of contrast.
Okay, now on to specifics. Like any paint, you will have to test these in your own room, since they vary greatly depending on the lighting. However, these three beiges are my personal favorites. I rarely suggest beige to clients, but when I do, it's normally one of these because they seem to work in most spaces, even with little to no natural light.
• Farrow & Ball's Oxford Stone: a darker beige that looks neutral without looking wimpy. Although it's warm, it has a little bit of gray that keeps it from looking like a bandaid.
• Benjamin Moore's Tapestry Beige: a light beige with a fair amount of gray. It skews green in some lights. I used this in my own very neutral bathroom, and still find it refreshing and peaceful years later.
• Benjamin Moore's Grant Beige: a medium beige with some gray in it. You can check it out in Georgia's nursery.
Now, I know there are more than three good beiges in the world. Chime in with your favorites. Where have you used them, and why do they work?
(Images: Leah Moss for Karlton Kelly Design)
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I use Little Green's Mid Clay.
I am a huge lover of colour and have painted hundreds of walls over the years in hundreds of beautiful colours. Show me an Yves Klein blue, for instance, and I am dumbstruck.
However, now I have two small boys and the visual clutter in my apartment is no longer controllable. No matter how often you, or they, tidy up, there is still stuff stuff stuff everywhere, books, half finished projects, latest greatest works of crayon art.
The only way I have been able to cope with it is to have clean soothing beige walls. One by one, over about a year, the rooms have all become Mid Clay. "Magnolia" was the dirty word for it when I was small.....
I still revert to type ocassionally and a wall becomes Stone Blue or Parma Grey, but after a few months, the coloured walls seem too busy and distracting and they become beige again. The upside is that it is much easier to hang art.
White I always find too cold. It gives me the same feeling that I get from being a room with a single central light bulb hanging from the ceiling, I can't wait to get out.
Btw, I am not completely boring, Mid Clay goes fabulously with Little Green's Dark Lead which I have on a few walls......
By any chance, does anyone know where that mirror is from?
I think it's hard to recommend paint colours on a blog. What works in the east, doesn't work in California. Get samples and put them up if you want a good result. Don't use just the cards. Benjamin Moore Calming Creme looks beige on my walls sometimes.
Beige looks a thousand times better than white, imo.
This post speaks to me on so many levels. Our house is primarily beige alls (Simplify Beige by Benjamin Moore); beige shag carpet; two pieces of beige microfiber (a sofa downstairs and a sectional upstairs); builders-grade, oak cabinetry; large, unframed mirrors and Hollywood panel lights in all the bathrooms; gold doorknobs; and off-white tile. The combined effect of all these elements is stifling, to say the least, but my husband is very adamant about not turning our house into a "paint explosion." If I could just talk him into painting the walls a prettier neutral, I would be so much happier with our house.
the cubby - the mirror looks like one that is available at Ballard Designs.
thank you so much!
Typo! Typo! It's Band-Aid!!!
Great post and ironically wonderful comment from pleiovn.
Beige is a neutral that can work so well as long as it masquerades as other colors. If I had to paint a beige, I'd pick a darker beige, something approaching a dark tan or something with olive green undertones. I couldn't pick anything that erred on the side of being Band-Aid colored.
I painted the kitchen Martha Stewart's Buckwheat and it works well with white cabinets, dark floors and blue accents. Plus I like the name.
Benjamin Moore Pale Oak - a very light greige - I have it in my living room after putting up a zillion samples and I LOVE IT. I also have Sherwin Williams Perfect Greige in the hallway. I LOVE THAT TOO.
I should elaborate. I started with Perfect Greige on my living room walls, but it looked much, much darker than the chip. I didn't put up samples...that was an expensive mistake. I went with the "make dark room look darker and cozy" thing but it felt claustrophobic. So I used it for hallways and it's perfect.
Then back to the drawing room with the ... living room...I have some MCM furniture including a large modular wall unit, and I didn't want it getting lost in the paint color. I also was reading about paint undertones and realized in the past I've had wood with yellow or peachy paint undertones, and that's why everything looked so 70s blah. And I love the 70s - but that was blah. So Pale Oak has more of a blue undertone, but is very very light, and it's nice contrast with my wall unit and dark wood floor. Definitely a more sophisticated beige than I've used in the past, and not close to a builder's beige.
Where's that carpet from? Gorgeous.
Behr PECAN SANDIE
Actually, I think beige and white for wall coloring is a smart thing to do. It's neutral enough that you can go crazy with color in other ways. Art, furniture and accessories...all without adding a claustrophobic feeling.
I always paint my house interiors a warm white since I feel like 1) the last thing I want to do is repaint before I absolutely have to and 2) It is really forgiving to a lot of style changes and evolutions over a period of time.
I'm the first to admit that style is not just subjective, but highly personal. But I never get why people feel so scared of white. I think a neutral backdrop can be more liberating and pro-color than most people think. In fact, when people visit my house, everyone remarks about "all the colors." Never had anybody even notice the white walls.
Oh...poor Krashing Kritter! I had those "gold" doorknobs, too. With a crust of paint around them. (And the hollywood light strips and mirrored walls in all the baths) It will be a while, but little by little you will pick your projects and make that house over until it is all yours.
The shag carpet sounds like a priority. Anything old enough to be shag has got to be full of a lifetime of dirt and pestilence. Have you peeked underneath...any hardwood?
Once, hubby was out of town for a week I had my sister and girlfriend over for a painting party..hint, hint.
Behr Nile Sand
When working with wood tones from existing cabinets and/or floors beige is practically a requirement, although the last few years it's shifted to more of a greige. A good beige can bring a lot of elements together.
For a true beige I like Benjamin Moore Huntington Beige. I have a ceiling painted in Buckwheat Flour from Martha Stewart, and where I have it, it's more like a sophisticated shadowy white tone.
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I am not a fan of applying Behr paint and I found that out painting my bathroom. BUT ... turns out I love the color I chose. It's called Gallery Taupe.
The bathroom has one high window. It faces east and gets very bright light in the morning and much more subdued light thereafter. But the color looks great as it changes in response to the light. I have some bamboo wood in the room; accessories that are a pear green color; white ceiling, woodwork, fixtures, and countertop, and two large mirrors framed in hammered copper. I'd use the color again and hope that Behr paint responds better to a flat surface than a highly textured one like I have in my Southern Arizona home. I've never been a beige fan being terrified of getting the color I refer to as Baby Poop. Gallery Taupe definitely isn't that.
http://m.homedepot.com/p/BEHR-Premium-Plus-8-oz-ICC-89-Gallery-Taupe-Interior-Exterior-Paint-Sample-ICC-89PP/202177929/
Behr, Sandstone Cove. It has a grey tone, and is really pretty. We used it in an upstairs bathroom with a brown stone tile, and a kitchen with a grey stone tile, and it works beautifully with both.
It's actually a newer house - less than 10-years-old - so I don't think the shag is terribly toxic. It's also been deep-cleaned twice in the past two years.
The worst section of carpet is downstairs in the living area. The previous owners had two dogs and they tore the edges of that section to shreds. We received a credit to replace the carpet when we moved into the house. Unfortunately, we had to use the credit to pay for our homeowners insurance. My husband was laid-off for a year shortly thereafter, so we simply haven't had the money to replace it; however, now that he's working again, I fully intend to rip that section out. My dream is to replace it with wood flooring - even Pergo would do - but we're still debating the pros and cons of wood vs. carpet (we have a one-year-old and the carpet's better for baby falls).
Oh, and the Hollywood light strips are going as soon as I find some pretty, inexpensive light fixtures. I hate them! The worst is in our master bathroom, where there's an oak, three-paneled medicine cabinet hanging on the wall. Reminds me of grandpa's bathroom at my grandparents' old house - YUCK!
I'm sure beige will come into fashion again. It's a great neutral, especially paired with black. I love the F&B beige range!
I'm from South Asia and in my native culture using lots of bright colors in clothes and home decor is very popular. When we bought our first home I wanted to use a calm and neutral shade of paint on all the walls that would be a good backdrop for many different colors. Then, by chance, I was looking through one of my mother's books on the history of art in our country and saw that the pages with photos of different paintings, sculptures, etc., were all of one warm, beige-y shade. I took the book to Sherwin-Williams and found a paint color, Believable Buff, that most closely matched the book pages. We painted our home in that color and it's just perfect! It takes on a very subtle, almost wheat-gold shade in the sunlight, which I absolutely love. It seems to change in different kinds of light too, but it always tends to lift my spirits.