Paint colors that help your home look cleaner.

You’ll live with your interior and exterior paint colors for a long time, so you want to feel good about them.  If a paint color can make your home feel cleaner – all the better!

General rules for painting so your home looks cleaner:

• Avoid earth tones – they tend to be immediately dingy looking.  This includes anything with a brown, mossy green, or yellow undertone.

  

  • Consider a scrubbable paint that will allow you to clean the scuff marks your son’s scooter made on the baseboards. Scrubability is the ability of a paint coating to resist staining, making it more washable.  Using premium paint that can be easily washed is important in areas of the house where, for example, foods might splatter.

• • Consider the sheen of the paint:
    • Matte or flat paint sheens hide help wall imperfections like dings and scratches.
    • On the other hand, shiny sheens like semi-gloss are more durable and easier to clean.
    • Many paint manufacturers now make a scrubbable flat finish – we recommend Sherwin Williams’ Duration Home or Sherwin Williams’ Emerald flat paint – both formulas give you a beautiful flat finish with washability.

• • Consider scuff-resistant paint in high-traffic areas.

• • Wash your walls – you may not need to paint at all!  This is the first step to staging your home to sell.  For scuffs try a Magic Eraser but test it in an inconspicuous area, these little sponges act like sandpaper and can “accidentally erase” the sheen and leave marks on your walls.

• • Install wainscot. This way, you can use semi-gloss paint, which is more durable than regular matte wall paint.

• • Use color, not white, on baseboards since baseboards tend to take a beating. Painting the baseboards the same (non-white) color as the wall can help disguise scuffs.

• • Use great-quality paint. The cost of the paint is only about 10% of the cost of a professional painting project, so getting better paint doesn’t add much in cost, but it adds to the longevity and washability of the paint.

• • Consider painting brick—this is not an easily reversed decision, so it shouldn’t be made lightly, but painting over brick can make a “spotty” and “brown” space look cleaner and less distracting.

• • Dark, moody colors work for rooms with low light. This is a bit counterintuitive, but working with, not against, the lack of light by painting a dark color can add to the space’s vibe.  Using a bold color should be done with confidence.  Use deep indigo, plum, or even black. Avoid medium tones because they will make the room look muddy and uninspired.

White paints that make your home feel clean

Try to avoid warm whites as they can feel dingy – To test for the amount of yellow or brown in a paint color, compare a piece of white copy paper to a paint sample – the warmer whites will be obvious.

Try these two colors as a starting place and remember to paint a large sample on your wall before deciding – the lighting and time of day can affect the color you see.  Don’t rush this process.

Start with these two “clean” whites at the paint store when sampling colors:

• Sherwin Williams’ White Flour
• Benjamin Moore’s Simply White

Light blue shades can make bathrooms and kitchens look cleaner:

If you want your kids’ bathroom to feel cleaner (and distract from the toothpaste globs in the sink), start with these two colors:

• Sherwin Williams Sea Salt
• Benjamin Moore Intuition

Gray Paint Colors for a modern feel:

Gray is tricky because it can be earthy and dingy or cool and clean.

Start at the paint store with these two “clean-looking” gray paint colors:

• Sherwin Williams’ Agreeable Gray
• Benjamin Moore Harbor Gray

Playroom colors – neutral and cool

Your playroom is likely a space where toys stay out on the floor.  To combat the visual overload of those Legos, consider painting the space a cool and neutral color.  The toys add plenty of color already.

The wrong exterior color can make a home feel dingy and “out of date”:

Free large color samples – even if you’re not ready to paint!

We offer free 8″ x 11″ color samples – email [email protected] with colors you’re considering, and we’ll mail you Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams large color samples for free – this is a free service we offer everyone – even if you’re doing the painting yourself!  Hang all the samples on your walls or exterior surfaces and live with them throughout the day and week.  You’ll likely be able to eliminate a few colors immediately and live with the others until you’re happy with the color you’ve chosen.

Our color resources:

Universally great paint colors (to start your search)

How to sample paint

Free computer color renderings of your home or space – this way, you can preview the color to ensure that, indeed, the space will look cleaner.

Complimentary color consulting in your home with every project we paint.

If you want to feel great about the paint color you’ll see hundreds of times as you drive up your driveway or enter your main bedroom, our designer Kate Rafoth can work with you for free.

It’s worth every second you spend with her getting your color “feeling” just right.

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How paint colors make you feel

Working with our free color consultant in your home

Historic colors of the South Shore and Boston area

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