Inside: Learn how to choose the perfect greige paint color for your walls with these simple tricks and avoid ending up with too much pink or beige in your final wall color!
I get this question a lot… “What is the grey paint color on the walls in your house?”
Today I’m answering that very question, but more importantly I’m going to explain how to choose the perfect greige paint for your house — cause around here the why and how is always more important than the what!
>>Want to learn how to create a color palette you love, even if there are colors in your home you can’t change? Click here to learn about my course, Color Made Clear
What color is greige anyway?
If you haven’t heard of greige, you’ve most definitely seen it.
The color greige is like the perfect beige from the 90’s and the perfect grey got married and had a baby! Greige paint is my favorite neutral for walls because it goes with everything –and doesn’t make me want to hurl like most beiges do.
Greige paint goes with both warm colors and cool colors, so it’s perfect.
Now, I hope I’m not offending, but the problem with beige is that it’s really hard to pick the right one and often times people end up choosing a beige that turns out looking pinky beige, or even orange! Ya know what I mean?
My sister in law recently had this problem and it cost her big bucks cause she had to pay her painter to repaint –ugh! I helped her pick out a perfect greige color the second time around and realized that there’s a definite trick to picking out a perfect greige paint color. —Believe me, I’ve made my own pinky beige mistakes in the past, but I’ve learned to avoid them.
When we bought our house, we had it painted before we moved in, and I really honed the skill of picking the right greige paint. We painted almost every interior wall of our house with this neutral greige paint —so it had to be right.
And it was!
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Why you should use the color greige on your walls
Grey is definitely a trend that doesn’t seem to be going away, but no one wants the walls of their home to feel like cement right?
The trick is to pick a warm grey which means you want a grey paint with some brown it it.
And what do you get when you mix brown and grey? That’s right, greige! Believe me, greige is your new best friend.
Because greige is essentially a perfect mix of brown and grey it’s considered a warm grey and literally goes with everything.
Here is what it looks like in my home:
This is my entryway. You can see that the greige wall color goes really well with wood tones. This space does’t get a ton of light, but the greige here doesn’t make it too dark.
The color palette in my home has a lot of grey and blue tones and the greige walls go perfectly with these cool colors too. Even recently when I updated my family room and added a lot more pops of color, the greige walls still go perfectly.
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You can see here in our kitchen where a lot of activity happens that the greige paint goes with everything. This room gets a lot of warm natural light and the greige is a perfect background for everything else going on.
Convinced yet? Let’s dive into the easy steps to choose the perfect greige paint color for your home…
How to choose the perfect greige paint
Use the darkest hue on the swatch as your guide.
This will give you an idea of the true undertones that will show up even in the lighter hues.
Let’s look at an example.
The second color from the top (image below) would probably be one that a lot of people would grab as a good neutral.
But look at the darkest hue on that swatch. There’s a lot of red in that brown. And so as the hue gets lighter, there will be red or orange undertones that show up in your wall color. You don’t want that.
You with me? Let’s keep going…
Find a dark hue with the perfect balance of brown and black
Again using the darkest colors on the swatch, look at colors below… (moving left to right)
The first brown has lots of red in it. –No good cause pink will show up on our walls.
Next you can see a lot of purple show up in the darkest shade, so a slight purple tint will show up even when you use the lightest color.
The next swatch has green in it which you can’t see by looking at the lightest shade. But we know better. Looking at the darkest shade tells us there’s a hint of green in this color.
And finally in the last two you can see a lot of black in the darkest hue, so these will read more grey in the lighter shades.
From there you can narrow down your search.
Use the lighter shades going up the strip to determine undertones
Once you narrow your search, you’ll want to to use the hues going up the swatch to determine the greige color you’ll use on your walls.
You can see that I have two base colors below. One is a true brown, but you can see the grey show up as you move up the swatch. The other base color is a cooler, more true grey and you can see a lot less brown show up as you move up the strip.
This is important because these undertones will show up even in the lightest shades of the color.
After following those steps I decided on Sherwin Williams Requisite Gray as the perfect greige paint color for my walls. It is just the right amount of grey with a slight warm undertone.
And that is the trick!
By looking at the darkest hue first, you’ll be able to instantly see which undertones will show up in the lightest shades of the color!
What colors go with greige?
Like I mentioned before, greige is both a cool and a warm neutral so it really can go with everything. You saw how you can even add a green or purple undertone to your greige to give it just a hint of color which you may want to do.
Depending on which greige paint you choose, you can pair it with cool colors like blue and grey to warm colors like rusts and yellows. The sky is the limit with this color.
To get you started I broke down 12 neutrals into undertone colors for you. It will give you another run through of this trick to choosing the right paint color but with more variation and give you 12 neutrals to try as a starting point based on your color scheme. Click here to read 12 perfect neutrals.
Other things to consider when choosing colors for your home
A lot of factors go into finding the perfect greige paint color for your walls.
Things like your home color palette, existing colors in your home (that you may not be able to change), and the color of the natural light, or lack of natural light can change the way a color shows up on your walls.
In my self-paced online color course, Color Made Clear, I walk you through all the steps to choosing and using color in your home to create a pulled together and cohesive look, even if you have things like cabinet color or floors you can’t change. Learn more about the step-by-step video lessons and worksheets inside Color Made Clear by clicking here.
Get the color you want mixed anywhere
The color used in my home is Requisite Gray by Sherwin Williams.
If you don’t have a Sherwin Williams near you, your local hardware store can typically do a color match. I do this a lot at Home Depot. Just tell ’em the brand and color and often they can look up the formula and mix it for you.
Don’t forget to Pin before you go by hovering over any image!
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