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All The Paint Colors In Our Home

I’ve been meaning to write this post for ages, first and foremost because you guys ask about the paint colors in our house all the time and I needed a single place to direct everybody to, and, second, because it’s so helpful for me to have a resource point when I need to check to see if a new paint color or piece of décor will match the overall palette of our home. If you haven’t compiled a visual grouping of all the paint colors in your home, I highly recommend doing so since having it will help you make informed, cohesive décor decisions down the line.

At any rate, the graphic above is the new “official” breakdown of all the current paint colors inside our home. You might notice that it’s entirely devoid of warm tones. That’s because we have so many warm wood tones scattered throughout our home (things like our hardwood floors, stained wood mid-century furniture, wood trim, etc.) that we didn’t need to incorporate that section of the color wheel into our paint scheme. The cool-toned paint colors we have collected over the years perfectly complement our orange- and red-toned wood furnishings and architectural details. You might be able to see what I mean in the room pictures below.

Keep scrolling for a linked list of all the paint colors alongside photos of what the colors look like in “real life” rooms inside our mid-century ranch.

All The Paint Colors In Our Home

1. Halcyon Green: The previous homeowners of our old townhouse had used this color as an accent in the living room, and we’ve been copying them ever since! We also used the color on our front door. It’s the perfect desaturated mid-tone blue/green.

All The Paint Colors In Our Home

2. High Reflective White: This is our go-to white paint color. You can get it right off the shelf at Sherwin-Williams because it’s their most pure option for white paint. It brightens just about any space we put it in, even if the room gets no natural light.

3. Agreeable Gray: My parents used this color in their new house when they moved to town back in 2019, and, after seeing it, I decided that I just had to try it in our house! It’s a warm gray/beige tone that helped add some coziness to our bright white-painted living room when used on just one wall.

4. Illusive Green: This is the gray/green tone we painted our side door, and also the door to our new shed out back. Having the colors match one another along the exterior of our home adds a sense of cohesion.

5. Surf Camp: I experimented quite a bit with dark colors a couple of years ago, and this rich navy blue (with just a hint of green!) is a true favorite. We painted it on the DIY board and batten trim in our lounge to help hide the TV.

6. Mist on the Moors: This is a brand new addition to our paint scheme, and was an instant favorite! I love the soft, spa-inspired color. We put it in our dining room, and then in our main bedroom, again, to add a sense of cohesion from the front to the back of the floor plan.

7. Pale Sepia: We put this soft gray, barrreeely purple paint color on the once-dated vanity in our downstairs hall bath to give it a more updated look. We also painted the stairs of our made-over landing this color! It’s a chalk decorative paint, so it’s very easy to use.

8. Rebel: If you’re looking for a version of black paint that isn’t quite as pure/dark as true black, then Rebel is the color for you. I love using it on furniture and décor projects, like the house numbers planter box on our side entry and a bird house by our deck in the backyard. I also used it on the base of our new shed to make it look more grounded and finished.

9. Forest Edge: I always felt like our downstairs hall bathroom was missing something until I decided to incorporate a feature color block of this bright teal paint. I love the pop of personality it adds to the space!

10. Cascades: This is my all-time favorite dark paint color. We used it in our lounge and also our dining room, and it has been my most-asked-about paint color on Instagram. I adore it, and couldn’t recommend it more if you want to paint a dark feature wall in your home.

I think that covers everything! We have used a handful of other paint colors over the years in this house that didn’t get mentioned above (like “Spiced Brandy,” “Modern Love,” and “Snowbound”). I liked those colors a lot, but they didn’t end up sticking around for the long haul. I wanted to focus on our absolute favorites this go-around, so I hope you found it helpful! Let me know if you have a favorite paint color or two that you’ve used in your house in the comments below.

*I earn a small percentage from purchases made using the affiliate links above. Affiliate links are not sponsored. Rest assured that I never recommend products we wouldn’t use or don’t already love ourselves.

Lately, I’ve been on the lookout for projects around the house that don’t require tons of heavy lifting or bulky tools. Think: small scale updates that can be knocked out in an hour or two. I love that these types of projects make our spaces feel refreshed, but they don’t cause much stress or disruption to our everyday lives.

One such quick décor update that we made recently was in our kitchen. I think I was leaning back against the counter waiting for water to boil when I happened to look up at the cabinet over the refrigerator. That particular storage spot has always acted more like “no man’s land” than functional kitchen organization, mostly because it’s a little awkward to reach.

Ever since we moved in, the cabinet has played host to things like our to-go casserole holder, a reusable lunch box I use when I go to a winery and pack snacks, fabric shopping bags, a nice grill tray that we can’t use anymore because we sold our grill, and a few other odds and ends that are only used occasionally, at best. You can see the state of things in the photos above and below.

Anyway, for whatever reason, the lightbulb went off in my head while I was standing there pondering the cabinet, and I realized that we could make much better use of the space by removing the doors and turning it into a cool display for cookbooks and things. We can access it easily enough using our everyday kitchen stool, and I also thought that maybe opening the cabinet up would make our small-ish kitchen feel a little bigger. Extra depth equals more visual space, you know?

The first step, of course, (and practically the only step) was removing the cabinet doors. We did so just by unscrewing the hinges that held the doors to the cabinets, and then we carefully placed the doors (hinges, handles, magnetic door catches, and all!) in storage. I’m sure I’ll get a wild hair one day to close the cabinet back up, so we definitely didn’t consider trashing the doors. They’re safely tucked away on a shelf in the basement for whenever we feel like undoing this little project.

The only other thing we had to do, which you might be able to skip, was remove the old cabinet shelf liner. Our home was built in the 1960s, and the original paper was still going pretty strong on the shelves. How charming! Only problem is that I thought the shelf liner made the now-exposed shelves look like just an oddly placed exposed cabinet interior. That, of course, is what it actually is, but I wanted to do my best to hide that fact by removing the shelf paper to expose the nice stained wood shelves themselves.

I thought we were going to have a huge job on our hands scraping off the liner, but it actually got done in about 15 minutes thanks to an old razor blade we had and some wallpaper remover liquid spray that we also already had in the basement near our painting supplies. We started by peeling back as much of the paper as we could (it mostly came off in a big single sheet!), and then we sprayed the leftover backer paper and adhesive with our wallpaper remover solution. We let that sit for a minute or so, and then we were able to easily scrape away the last of the paper and paste residue using our razor blade.

After the paper was all gone, we were able to step back and appreciate the nice clean wood finish of the cabinet—or, should I now say, open shelves! We nicked only one tiny spot in the wood with our blade that had to be touched up, but I had some stain handy, and we were able to dab that on to hide it. You miiiiiiiiight be able to spot the tiny dot of missing wood finish in the middle of the center shelf in that photo below. Keep scrolling for close-ups of the fix. Now that the stain is touched up, you’d never know we accidentally cut into the wood.

And then it was time to style. Since the open shelves are a little out of reach on an hourly type of basis without the assistance of a stool, I didn’t want to load it up with things we need constantly. Instead, I chose to arrange our cookbooks up there, along with some decorative glassware, handmade ceramic mixing bowls we got for our wedding and use when entertaining, plus a few other occasionally used odds and ends. I never consider a surface “officially” styled without a plant, but I opted for a faux one in this instance since a live one wouldn’t be as easy to water.

So, there you have it! Our brand new DIY open kitchen shelves. It was a really, really easy, no cost project that has added so much style to our kitchen. I actually love it so much more than I anticipated! I couldn’t recommend this little weekend project more if you’re looking to mix things up in your kitchen. How would you style your open kitchen shelves?

All The Paint Colors In Our Home

Turn A Cabinet Into Open Shelving

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