Inspirational ideas
Colour ideas & inspiration for the living room
Both a room for receiving and for living, the sitting room deserves a palette that can do it all: welcome the day, close in around the fire at night, and flatter pictures, books and well-loved objects.
Our living-room schemes explore every route — enveloping walls, painted bookcases, picked-out cornices, contrasting doors — each with the exact references of the colours used.
“A successful sitting room is a conversation between the walls and the life lived against them; colour sets its tone.”
Which colours work in a living room?
The living room is where you move from day to evening without leaving your chair: the colour has to work in daylight and under three lamps alike. That is why our living-room schemes almost always set a calm ground shade against a deeper accent on the woodwork, the alcove or the chimney breast.
For a light room, Maugham White No.2, Cotton Street No.3, Whitehall No.9 and Holbein Chamber No.7 are our most versatile whites, usually paired with Limestone No.55 or Frieze No.84 on cornices and skirtings. The Boltons No.28 and Saint Johns No.64 then make excellent ground walls: grey enough to settle the furniture, warm enough never to look austere.
For a dressed, evening room, look at Deep Green FTT-012, Forest BH.16, Bridge Blue No.222 and Messel No.39: deep shades that make a bookcase, a chimney piece or an attic sitting room markedly more elegant. London Brick BH.07, meanwhile, brings a soft brick that warms a north-facing room instantly.
See also our green paint ideas, blue paint ideas and grey paint ideas, or browse all our living room paints.
Our schemes
52 schemes
