How to Set Whole House Color Palette

Have you ever wondered about how to set a color palette for your whole house or your whole apartment? I got this question, so I thought I would share some examples.

I’m going to show you three examples of this being done well so you can see why it works.

If you read to the end to the end, I’m going to show you an example of two homes that are not done quite so well. You’ll be able to see why it doesn’t work.

What Makes A Color Palette Cohesive3 Ways to Continue a Color Palette Room to Room

The one thing you’re going to notice about these homes, where the color palette works, is that there are colors that are drawn from one room to the next.

Home #1

In this house, what I love about it is they didn’t use any colors on the walls, but the color palette still looks intentional.

In the living room, there is a rusty color coming from the floor, but they’ve used pink as an accent color. They’ve got a lot of really warm neutrals in the room.

Then, they’ve carried that through into the kitchen, where warm neutrals are pulled in from the floor and some on the walls. Notice they brought in some green, which is different from the living room, but they’re still colors that overlap.

When you go into the bedroom, they come back and bring the pink in again, but they still maintain warm neutrals and add a little bit of blue.

The colors in each room are not the same, but they do work well together because there’s enough similarity and overlap.

Home #2 – Wall Color

In the house pictured above, they used paint to tell the color story. Paint can be a more expensive way to do it.

In the dining room, they used a really rich teal blue color on the walls, but they had a lot of gray and a lot of gold.

In the living room, they pulled in the gold and kept the gray, but they also brought in a lot of black, and continued to use a taupe color.

In the bedroom, they stuck with the same color palette as used in the living room. It has a lot of black, gray, and taupe.

Home #3 – Floors & Fabric

In the third example, they use the floors to help tie the color palette in this home together.

In the kitchen, they picked this up with the countertop and then they brought in a blue color in the wallpaper. You can see they’ve reused these two blue and teal colors throughout the color palette.

When you go into the living room, notice a lot of grays. But, you have the warm honey color on the window trim and a lot of blue in the upholstery and the fabric.

In the bedroom, they brought the blue into the walls, and then the floors incorporated the maple honey color. Again, you can see the colors that are consistent from one room to the next, not the exact same, but a few of the colors.

Whole Home Color Palette Mistakes

Now, let’s take a look at the rooms that didn’t quite pull it off you’ll be able to see why.

Home #1 – House Color Palette Not Intentional

In this first one, you can see it is an open concept room. In the entryway and dining area; it’s a lot of blue and brown.

When you walk into the hallway, you immediately change to a different color palette, even though they’re connected, and it is pink and green.

When you continue further down the hall into the living room, it’s gray. It doesn’t look like they were intentional about using the colors from one room to the next.

Home #2 – House Color Palette Not Defined

In the second example, they’ve used in the living room brown and red in the drapes, and then the sofa and the upholstery are gray and blue. There’s not an any consistency in the colors even in one room.

When you look through to the dining room, it’s almost all neutrals that are gray. 

What doesn’t work in these last two examples is they didn’t choose any colors that carry from one room to the next. And, they broke the most important rule, which is that they didn’t use any intention with their color.

What I suggest to do to set a color palette for a whole house is the same thing I like to do for one room. I like to stick it on a mood board so I can see if the colors go together. I hope you’ll take the time to use a mood board when you’re putting together your whole home house color.

And if you want a tutorial on how to do that, check out Canva Mood Board Tutorial For Beginners.