Burning Question: Neutral Or Not?
We know this question is sure to stir things up around here. This week’s query is all about wall color. Do you prefer a stark and clean gallery-ish white? Something soft and neutral? Something bold and enveloping? Or do you like a mix of hues (both soft and saturated)?
We’re excited to hear where you stand on the issue. In fact, we whipped up this handy little poll to keep everything tabulated:
[poll id="21"]
We’d love to hear more about why you voted the way you did, so feel free to comment away with more details.
Image courtesy of Ideal Home.
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Our ranch’s living room/kitchen/dining room/sunroom is an open floor plan and painted in the same neutral khaki color – but our kitchen has tiny red tiles on the walls above the granite countertops, and so I painted one wall in the dining room a deep red to match the tiles. Our bedrooms and office are all in the green-blue range – and in our full bath (circa 1957), we embraced the original yellow tile. :)
I love the bold colors that I see in magazines….but in our house we are pretty boring. I am not talented enough to pull off the paint job or the decorating. I am trying to compensate by adding brighter throw pillows and art to our neutral house.
PS – This month’s House Beautiful is all about bold color and it is amazing!
I prefer neutrals with pops of color using accessories. Although I do like the way that room in the photo is put together, a color like that would just annoy my eyes. After working 10+ hrs a day, I like to come home to a room that’s easy on the eyes and relaxes my mind.
I voted for mixed, but technically I guess the only neutral in our house is the hallway. But that depends on whether you are in the “yellow is a neutral” camp or not, because 4 of our rooms are yellow.
Our kitchen used to be a kind of dingy greeny beige. I went a little nutso with the colour and it’s now a vivid turquoise (Tropicana Cabana) with bright white trim and billowy white curtains. We live across the road from a beach, and while it’s pretty foggy and cool (rural Nova Scotia), I still like the beachy vibe the kitchen colours suggest.
I’m a fan of the ‘white’ look but don’t think I could ever be that coordinated.
The neutral walls are cool too as long as there is something interesting going on in the room. But more often they remind me of my Aunts house in the burbs that I hated SO much. We were never allowed to really touch anything, or sit on some of the furniture. (Why have furniture that you won’t let people sit on?) It’s a negative connotation more than a genuine dislike.
In my apartment? I love me some colored walls. I generally go for loud walls and more slightly more laid back accessories.
I love bold colors– and I use them! My apartment is open concept so I’ve painted the living room/dining room walls a dark khaki, but the kitchen walls are lime green!
To balance it out, I tend to go more neutral on my accessories.
I like to keep my walls and large furniture, to not neutral, but soft easy colors. Then I bring in lots of color with wall hangings, baskets, blankets, pillows, vases, etc. It allows me to easily change the accent color, changing the look of the room & integrate new pieces into each room w/o color clash. Then I have to repaint FAR less often!
Living in an apartment stinks because I can’t color the walls, but I make pops of color throughout the apt with pillows and pictures. I wish to have a house soon so I can experiment with those subtle hues and pops of color :)
I like painting with blues, even though green is my favorite color, weird eh?
I love the bold look of the picture in this post but over the years, I realized I like that look in magazines and other people’s homes but not my own. I just can’t pull it off and end up hating any bold color I put on the wall. So I decided instead of stressing over paint colors, I’m happy with neutrals.
I love having a few bright accent walls. We have an open concept kitchen/living/dining with a long wall connecting all three. I painted it a nice, bright, lime/grass green and hung large frames w/ white matts w/pictures from our wedding. The white really pops on the green.
I really prefer soft and neutral on the walls and like to use colors like red for pillows, throws, candles, etc. It’s so much easier to switch accessories than repainting cause you get sick of the bright color. Plus, I just couldn’t relax in a room like the one above. Way too bright :D
Looks like I’m in the smallest group so far with the crisp white walls! I like to paint once and then be done with it. I tend to bring in a mix of shapes and textured neutrals (also love different wood tones and metallics) and add some color in with accessories, art, cushions/throws, fresh flowers, bowls full of fresh fruit, etc.
While I would have voted for “BOLD all the way!” about two weeks ago, after my brief experience with an orangey-red hue on the walls of my kitchen (similar to that in the photo,) I HAD to paint over it last night… so I ended up voting, “I’m a mixed bag- I prefer subtle hues and a few pops of serious color!” since most of my house is painted neutral with turquoise in the bedroom & a deep purply-red hue in my dining room.
I go for bold, rich, saturated jewel tones mixed with copious amount of white trim and dark wood floors. My front living room is this to die for dark blue which we call “LIe to me blue” since it matches the blue from the show. dining room is a dark teal, bedroom is BLACK! and I’m working on painting my kitchen this really pretty dark jewel toned intense purple.
the darker colors really make my art and furniture (and clutter lol) pop. I can get away with dark colors though because the house has so many windows and tall ceilings.
I’m completely in the bold category. My bathroom has scared people on more then one occasion. I tend to paint the walls a rich, saturated color and then accent them with neutral furnishings so the wall color is the show piece, the furnishings are it’s compliments and then I throw in some accent colors as well. As a graphic designer, I embrace color. In fact, there’s a great site, http://kuler.adobe.com, that is intended for graphic design palettes but could also be used as a great resource when putting together a room’s color scheme.
Our basic wall color is blue, but it’s a neutral blue. One thing I learned when working with our interior designer is that colors can be neutral. Our kitchen will be a bright blue. Everything’s color (as in not beige, the house was a nasty khaki when we bought it), but mostly neutral colors that aren’t eye sores.
I love dark rich colors on the walls! My dining/kitchen is a dark chocolate color, the cabinets I have painted black and distressed, and the old back splash tiles (were quite yucky!) are now a nice bright turquoise…. so yeah, bring on the color!!! I do like the look of subtle neutral hues on walls with more bold accessories and furniture. But in my mind I would much rather keep the furniture neutral with a few bold pillows etc. and get most of my color on the walls (hey, paint is cheaper than new furnishings.)
Neutrals with pops of color that I can change out when I feel like it. Color seems to be so trend driven in magazines and in blogs that follow the trends. I don’t stay with neutrals ‘to be safe’ but more because they quiet the mind and the feel of the home and then I can play with color, like turquoises, greens, blues, pops of orange and yellow and red. I do always seem to have anchors of black somewhere in the rooms.
I love color on the walls, I can’t stand white walls. Every room in our house is either blue, green, or khaki but look totally different. The hallways and bathrooms are khaki and everything else is either blue or green. We have a lot of brown furniture, and different shades of wood so it works really well together. We have a beachy vibe in our basement, so I really want to bring in charcoal grey furniture, which may not exactly match it, but I still think will look great (and also cover stains)
I’m in the tropics, so I’m alllllll about color, but I like it tempered.
I’ve totally changed my tune throughout the years. When we moved into our apartment, we went color-crazy (I’d never lived in a place where I was allowed to paint rooms whatever I wanted!) with a yellow kitchen, dark brown bedroom, plum study, moss green bathroom, and beige living room. Now, five and a half years later, I want to paint everything an antique white! I still love my paint colors, but I’ve found that they’re limiting, although I’m nervous that all white will get boring. So when we finally build our new home, I’m leaning toward all white with pops of color in accent walls, pillows, quilts and such. Who knows what I’ll think five years after that?
We’ve lived in our house for 2 years and painted a feature wall in our living room “red currant” shortly after we moved in. I’m already tired of it, and I feel limited by it, because I don’t have/want red anywhere else in the room. My husband almost passed out the other day when I suggested painting over it. Bless his heart, he worked so hard on it by himself while I was pregnant!
I voted for bold. Our living room is a dark blue, our kitchen is red, and the piece de resistance, our son’s bedroom is what I like to call construction paper green. He calls it his “great green room.”
I like bright white (with pops of color in the decor) or bold walls – pretty much anything as long as it’s not beige. Shades of off white, cream, tan, etc. are just not my thing.
Well, I was always a neutral girl. Light taupey colors for walls with crisp white trim. I just bought a fixer upper and after hating 3 different neutrals (that I had tested and loved prior to purchasing) I succumbed to the pressure of others to just paint the thing white so I could get moved in and pick my colors later.
As luck would have it, I L-O-V-E the stark white walls. I have accent walls in a soft brown and a light seafoamy blue/green and the white sets the colors off beautifully! It looks really modern and fun, not like the plain white boring house of my fears. It also sets off my neutral furnishings well and helps be avoid the dreadful matcy-matchy syndrome.
I’ve recently decided that bold colors on walls look better if you have crown molding. I think otherwise it can look cheap. I definitely think that the contrast between white crown molding adds a bit of sophistication.
I like color, but our main living area is beige becuase it extends down our hall. I actually have a post similar to this today: http://ourhumbleabowed.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/choosing-paint-colors/
I love bold colors and was so excited to paint when we bought our first home. But … the natural lighting in our house does not allow me to go as crazy as I would like. I brought in an expert from a local paint store, and she picked out colors for me, with my input of course, taking into account what I own, what I like, etc. I LOVE the colors. I went crazy in our basement family room (no outside light), and a bit lighter upstairs. And the whole house has a nice flow … not the same in every room, but the colors blend well.
I love grayish blues and greens for the walls, because I find them inviting and calming. I just don’t find homes with bright red walls to be inviting. But,if my home was bigger, I love the idea of a navy blue or eggplant formal dining room! But for my small house,I really think lighter colors make it seem bigger.
After your article mentioning the new Martha Stewart paint at HD, I stopped by on my lunch break yesterday to drool and dream. Then I was smacked right in the face by inspiration for my 40’s bungalow! A nod to the past with an All-American paint scheme of yellow and white, but bring it up to mod/urban with lots of black and grey.
Here is my dream paint scheme: Mimosa (the sunniest yellow for living areas), Ladybug (a true, blue-red for upholstery and accents), Silhouette (black for cabinets and wood), Picket Fence, (glossy white for trim and doors), Magnetite (a deep gray for bedroom walls for our day-sleeper) and Cumulous Cloud (a lighter gray for ceilings).
I guess I got a kick of inspiration, too, after seeing these AWESOME taxi pillows on CB2. How neat are these? http://www.cb2.com/family.aspx?c=595&f=6238
Now I just have to run it by the hubby (who is awfully vocal about the decorating) and afford it! Er – guess we’ll start with the pillows…
LOVE IT! Send us before and after pics for sure!
xo,
s
I love COLOR! I live by the principle that paint is cheap. I can paint over and over and over…why not enjoy myself?
Our first floor is a mix of a khaki in the foyer, a coppery orange in the formal LR, BM’s “summer plum” in the DR and muted but saturated green in the kitchen/family room combo.
All of the colors are represented in a striped fabric that covers a chair and ottoman we have in the family room. I love that I can bring in accents of the colors of each room into the others and create a nice flow while allowing each room to still have its own palette.
My house palette is inspired by Starbucks, at least the colors Starbucks used to have- eggplant, mustard, olive and tomato for the open areas and chocolate and lime for the master bedroom…I’m always hungry, coincidence?
I’m a little bit of both.
My bedroom used to be blue and lilac, not completely bold but still pretty bright and since February ’09 it’s been constantly changing (really, it’s not even done yet). I painted the walls white so I can have a kind of blank canvas so it’s not too crazy and busy, but our living room is soom to be changed from cream to a pretty bright blue.
I like it bold but PLEEEEEEEASE don’t give me accent walls. If you want to give me London Phone Booth Red, have the cajones to give me four walls of it.
I definitely voted that bold was my middle name. When my husband and I first started decorating our house, the only thing we could agree on was that we wanted lots of color! However, he did talk me into repainting my vibrant purple dresser and replacing my array of Anthropologie knobs for something a little more appropriate for a master bedroom. Apparently husbands aren’t a fan of knobs in the shapes of flowers and birds.
Gaining courage from John and Sherry’s encouragement (thanks again, guys!), I painted two of my kitchen walls a rich, cranberry red color. I love it!!!!!! I really like BOLD statements with touches of neutral.
I think each person’s eyes see color differently. What looks “bold” to one will look “garish” to another. My H literally CANNOT see differences in color value and tone at all. To him, red is red, whether it is dark, light, greyed, tomato or cranberry. It’s red. So he would very easily live in a house of nothing but neutrals and not even know the difference. Whereas, as an painter, I would feel like I was dying.
What’s great to me is that each person can find ways to still incorporate beautiful design and living spaces into his/her home, whether it be bold or neutral or somewhere in between.
Wow, what a great question!
I have to say that after following your blog, I’ve totally fallen into the neutral walls motif in the vast majority of my home (mostly all of the “public areas” – family room, kitchen, hallways, etc.).
However, I figure if a room has a “door” (bedroom, bath, etc.), then it’s fair game to go a little crazy with color. I did that for sure with my guest bedroom:
http://tellerallaboutit.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/before-after-bliss-be-our-guest-room/
…and we have another bedroom that we’re thinking of doing in grays/blues/sea tones. I don’t think I could go strictly neutral throughout the house. I think it’s perfectly okay to go crazy in some areas, but not all.
xoxo,
Lindsay
I love color on everyone else’s walls. I had color on my first house walls, but got annoyed when I wanted to mix up my color pallette and couldn’t. So, with our ‘forever home’ that we’re in, I stick to neutral colors for the walls with bright white trim, and mix it up with colored pillows or accent pieces. The walls are too big to change paint color every time I change my coloring scheme. I’m so indecisive… neutral on the walls just makes for a lot less to do to change up the look of my home!
Honestly, I love it all. I can walk into a room like your living room and love it. Or I could walk into the room on the image above and LOVE it. Bright and muted color palettes can be done really well or really terrible. To each her own! :)
I LOVE color. Our house has a lot of color in it, although not necessarily on the walls. And for some strange reason, red walls (like the ones in the picture) make me physically uncomfortable. I’ve never had such a strong reaction to any other decor choice, and I WANT to like red walls, but I just can’t! Weird, huh?
I am all over the place with this. Overall our house has pretty neutral bones (wall color and furniture), but we are far from neutral people if that makes sense. We love funky accessories and have crazy pops of color everywhere. I don’t really love white walls because I feel like our art looks better on non-white walls, if that makes any sense at all. Our front room is a really rich espresso color…in some light it almost looks black. I love it and it is calming to me, but I could see how some could think of that as bold.
We do have one room that is kind of a gold color and I am kid of over it. We never repainted it when we moved in and now I realize it is preventing me from what I do best, which is rotating all of our accessories around the house when I get bored with a room. I feel kind of stuck with this one, but cannot for the life of me figure out a color I want!
I guess for me, bottom line…I am more of a neutral wall color girl but only because I want to be able to switch out my accessories and have them be able to work in any room of my house. Yikes, sorry for writing a book. :D
We are bold! I have a red kitchen, green living room, blue bathroom and orange bedroom. I think I might have gone a little color crazy, coming from a white-walled apartment to a condo where I could paint, but I love how fun and punchy it looks. I used to have lots of colorful accessories and furniture too, but I’ve recently toned that down in favor of more nuetral pieces.
I LOVE COLOR! When I was sixteen I was allowed to pick out my own wall color for my bedroom, and I opted for a color called grasshopper green :) Even in my own home, my kitchen is Valspar Faded Clay; dining room–Valspar Cherry Chocolate; living room and entryway–Valspar–I don’t remember the name, but a pine green; bedroom–Valspar Coffee Bean. Our spare bedroom is a deep red and our office is the only color that did not work out the way I wanted it. It is a light blue that I intended to be more of a grey. When we refinish the hardwood floors, I am going to repaint, probably a butternut-ish color. Although I certainly think neutrals can be pretty, something about rich colors just calls to me!
All I know is the color in that picture is to die for! I love that room! :-)
Well…. I thought I loved and thrived on COLOR! Bright happy, bold, powerful color. Our living room is red. I wanted to paint our other living area green. Yes, color.
And then… I found your blog. Fell in love with your house and the lightness and “airiness.” I love the neutral, soft tones. And little bits of soft color here and there. I want it. In my house.
I love using bold. Our dining room is orange and everyone who visits just loves to be in that room. We’ve used bold throughout our home after reading Susan Sargent’s The Comfort of Color and Colorscapes. Check out those books. They are amazing!
We tend to prefer earth tones. I’d say we go toward neutrals more often, but I’m not necessarily afraid of color. Our living room is half white, half olive green. Everyone that walks in is like OMG, what paint color is this, where can we get it?
So, I think we walk that fine line. I’d say, we’ll probably never paint a room too terribly bold, but then I’m the girl that once painted my bathroom fuschia and then the next day painted it orange. Shrug. :p
I love neutral walls and furniture with pops of color in accessories like pillows, curtains, wall decor because I get bored easily. I love to make things fresh and new with a change in accessories without breaking the bank. Plus I can move things around room-to-room; makes it feel like a new space and keeps things modern and current. But I do love this red – perhaps on one wall. It can always be painted over…when I get bored. :)
I painted my kitchen cabinets turquoise. ‘Nuff said. :)