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Picking a color scheme for the living room is often more complicated than you might first think. If you have an open floor plan, your living room adjoins your kitchen and other spaces. The colors you choose impact the entire space and by extension the rest of the house.
Choose the right colors for the living room and it sets the stage for great design for the entire space. Here’s a few tips for living room color scheme success.
Warm
2024 is all about warmth. We all crave the warmth and coziness of a home that’s comfortable and inviting. Softer furniture, touchable textures, gathering places, and fireplaces are in demand this year. Another way to achieve some warmth is with your color scheme.
Warm colors are on trend and make a great foundation for the living room color scheme. They can range from neutrals like gray and beige to something more colorful like pastels. Browns are an excellent choice for a warm palette and they blend well with most other colors.
Just about any color can be made warm. Any color with some yellow or orange added has a glow that’s perfect for the warm color scheme. Yellow or terra cotta are favorites of the moment that bring some color in a soft shade that invites warmth.
In fact, color giant, Glidden, chose a sunny cream as its color of the year. Called Limitless, this a honey-beige, modern neutral that invites warmth right in. Its the perfect backdrop for any colors, equally embracing cool or warm accent colors.
Neutral
A neutral color palette is always on trend and perfect for a living room that blends into an open floor plan. Neutrals create a clean palette to work from so you can add color and pattern in the furnishings and accents. This makes it much easier to change things up should you want to do a little refresh.
Gray continues to be a favorite neutral color. Beige is another, warmer choice that always works. Don’t forget to consider less obvious neutrals like soft greens and blues, even an understated blush can work as a neutral.
If you're looking for a bit more color in your neutrals, try Sherwin-Williams' Upward. The barely-there blue is a refreshing color that's neutral enough to be spread across the room without competing with other elements or feeling overwhelming.
Green
For many trendsetters in color, green is the color of the year in 2024. In fact, Dutch Boy Paints chose a soft olive green, Ironside, as its color of the year. It's elegant and warm but also dramatic.
Graham & Brown presented Viridis as its color of the year. The gentle sage green brings warmth to any space and creates a calming effect.
White
White is always a good bet. It’s a blank canvas that you can dress up any way you like. It also makes a great accent color or stands in contrast to darker colors. There should be some form of white in every living room color scheme.
In 2024, pure, stark white has fallen by the wayside in favor of warmer whites like ivory, cream, and winter white. These beautiful colors do many of the same things as a pure white, just be careful to look out for the undertones. Most undertones are either yellow, blue, or gray. Warmer whites tend to have yellow and brown as undertones. Be sure the other colors you choose harmonize with those undertones.
Beige & Greige
Gray has been the color of the last decade. It defined kitchens, living rooms, bathrooms, the whole house. It worked as a primary color in some schemes and as an accent color in others. It was on the floors, ceilings, cabinets, and throw pillows. Warmer color trends mean that gray is less in demand and beige is back as the neutral color of choice.
Greige--a blend of beige and gray--is finding new popularity. It's an excellent color to set in the center of your living room color scheme, especially if you choose the greens and blues that are so popular this year.
Earthy
With focus shifting in 2024 into warmer color schemes, it has also meant the return to more earthy colors. Brown is coming back in all its coziness in various shades from beige to deep chocolate.
HGTV Home by Sherwin-Williams chose Persimmon as its color of the year. The earthy blush is warm and adds a pop of color yet can also blend into the other colors of the room with perfect harmony.
Naturally soft, earth tones are inviting and comfortable, the perfect aesthetic for a cozy living room color scheme.
Blues
By far the most popular color of the year in 2024 is blue. Though blue seems like a departure from the other warm colors that are popular this year, the way these blues are presented, they do feel warm and welcoming.
Blue Nova by Benjamin Moore has a slight gray to it that softens and warms the feel. Thermal by C2 is a robin-egg blue that is fresh as well as inviting. Bay Blue by Minwax is a blue wood stain that lets the warmth of the natural wood grain show through.
Choose the right living room color scheme for your space with the warmer, softer colors on trend in 2024. These beautiful colors will create the right environment for your living room that is versatile enough for an open floor plan color scheme.
