Good Questions: What "Calming" Color for These Walls?

10.17room.jpg Hello AT,

My husband and I are at a loss as to which color to paint the walls in our living room. The pea soup green that was here when we moved in is just not doing it for us. Unfortunately it's almost throughout the whole house!...

(Note: Include a pic of your problem and your question gets posted first.
Email questions and pics with QUESTIONS in subject line to:
editor(at)apartmenttherapy(dot)com)
Link To All Good Questions

The dining room leads into the living room and is an eye-searing yellow at the moment, but will be painted in the not-too-distant future.

We're looking for a calming color, not too dark, possibly a grey, blue, or a different green. The couches are staying but the carpet will be replaced with hardwood in the next year or so.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Kelly

Dear Kelly,

If you want calm, go cool. This means anything on the blue end of the spectrum (away from red and yellow) and would include blues, greys, magentas and some greens.

Looking at your living room, our suggestion would be to go for a Ben Moore China White (lighter) or Janovic Plaza's "Siberian Snowflake" which you can check out in this post: Good Questions: What's That Gray in the Pic?.

Comments (8)

What about a light blue green like a pale version of Tiffany blue? You can get some matching Dupioni silk curtains and it would be very serene.

I think that it all depends on what you mean by calm. Your window frames look like they're some kind of varnished wood, or is that paint?

If that's some kind of varnished wood and you end up with some kind of blue, I'm afraid you might find it seeming very 1980's, and I think your furniture, although light, seems fairly warm.

I think your best shot at serenity might be warmth, instead of coolness.

Hi.
Great space and stuff.
I'm with Curtis: go warm.
And a bit bold.
I just used a color called Starbuck by General paint, Canada.
Such an earthy color will warm up the room and make those window frames not so loud.
Add a hit of a trendy bold color for accent with toss pillows or accessories; orange is in vogue and will work well here.
would you consider painting that cool mirror frame in black?

Thanks for the suggestions so far and to Maxwell for posting my question!

Sorry, I should have mentioned in the original question that the windows are wood framed but will be painted white soon and we're also putting thick white baseboards in.

I actually hadn't thought of using a warm color - I'm a smoky blue/gray/green kind of gal - maybe it's time to mix it up a bit!

Kelly

If you like blues - try Kelly Moore Dreamy Space. I have it in my sunny living room and I get compliments all the time on the color.

I colour that I've used and have really liked is Debbie Travis's Vintage Velvet, which is only available in Canada, but on colocharts.org it have Ace Hardware's Fortune Rock as a reasonable match. It's kindof a greyed out mauve colour. I like it because it's cool but with some warmth to it which makes it a real neutral. The purplish colour is really subtle but noticeable enough to be different from your ordinary "greige", and it's not a girly colour. Just my opinion but I think it would look great with your furniture colour. Soft and calm but then you could add bolder colour with accents.