Our Home Color Palette
Every design decision in our house traces back to one thing: a color palette. It’s the reason a colorful home feels cohesive instead of chaotic, and it’s the first thing I’d tell anyone who wants to add more color to their space.
Here’s ours– both of them, actually! We have a downstairs palette for the main living areas and a slightly brighter version upstairs where the kids live. Same idea, different energy.
The Downstairs Palette
The downstairs palette is where everything started, and where it’s still evolving. These are the colors you’ll find throughout the main living areas, and every single one of them has a story.
Spotlight On The Colors
Card Room Green
Card Room Green is everywhere downstairs– kitchen cabinets, living room trim, entryway brick fireplace, stair beadboard. It’s the backbone of the whole palette.
What’s interesting about Card Room Green is that it shifts depending on the light– sometimes it reads green, sometimes almost blue– and you’d never guess how beautiful it would be just from looking at the sample card. It’s pretty dark and grey on the card!
India Yellow
If Card Room Green is the backbone, India Yellow is the star. I started small with the color– just a few picture frames painted with a sample can– and got bold when I painted the dining room trim. It’s visible from the kitchen and it is a showstopper.
I recently swapped Card Room Green in the pantry for India Yellow and it immediately made the whole space more fun. It’s a very Wes Anderson color, which is the best possible thing you can be in my mind.
Oval Room Blue
Oval Room Blue was on the palette for a long time before I actually used it. For a while it showed up in exactly one place: a lamp base. I eventually painted our brick wall in the living room with it (previously a dark green) and it immediately brought playfulness to the room.
It’s an especially great color alongside Off White and Card Room Green.
Templeton Pink
Templeton Pink shows up as actual paint in our bedroom as a full color drench, a few picture frames, and the window sashes in the dining room alongside India Yellow– an unexpected and delightful combination.’
But pink is also just everywhere in this house in quieter ways (coffee table books, candles, picture frames…)
Romesco
Romesco is a newer addition– we had leftover paint from upstairs projects and I decided to paint our TV frame with it. It sits against the Oval Room Blue brick wall and looks exactly right.
I’ve been bringing in more red touches since and it’s starting to feel like it was always supposed to be here.
Off White + Matchstick
These two neutrals tell a small story about how a palette evolves. I started with Off White because it worked with the colors I was using at the time– it has a slightly green undertone that’s perfect with French Gray and Card Room Green. I actually started in the house with French Gray but have since switched it all over to Card Room Green.
But as I’ve leaned more into India Yellow, I’ve found myself reaching for Matchstick instead– it has a yellow undertone that makes the India Yellow trim sing. Right now the Matchstick and India Yellow combination speaks to my soul a little bit. Which is just proof that even a settled palette isn’t really settled. It grows with you.
How To Use A Color Palette
A quick note before we go further: just because I’m referencing paint colors doesn’t mean a palette is a paint plan. It’s not. A palette is just a group of colors that work well together– a set of guidelines for what to bring into your space.
How you bring them in is completely up to you. Paint, yes, but also a rug, a pillow, a thrifted vase, a candle, a book spine. Pink shows up all over our house in rooms where nothing is painted pink. The palette doesn’t care how the color gets there. It just wants it there.
The Upstairs Palette
The upstairs palette shares the same DNA as the downstairs one– green, blue, yellow, pink– just with a little more personality. The colors are brighter, bolder, and exactly right for a space where kids live.
Spotlight On The Colors
Breakfast Room Green
The common thread through every kid space. Breakfast Room Green shows up as trim in the playroom and both boys’ rooms– it’s the color that ties everything upstairs together.
Our kids’ favorite color is green, so it felt right to let it lead. It’s bright and cheerful in a way that Card Room Green downstairs isn’t, and up here, that’s exactly the point.
Babouche
This one is special. Babouche is the yellow arch in our playroom— one of our very first color projects and honestly still one of our favorites.
Where India Yellow downstairs reads as a warm mustard, Babouche is just pure sunny yellow. It’s the kind of color that makes a kid space feel like a kid space.
Stone Blue
Stone Blue shows up more than you might expect. It’s the color of the playroom built-ins and the bathroom trim upstairs.
In our youngest son’s room the blue comes from the wallpaper rather than paint, which is a good example of the palette at work: I didn’t reach for a brush, I just let the color palette guide the decision.
Romesco
The red of the palette. It shows up in both boys’ rooms in different ways– painted bed frames in our youngest’s room, woven into the checkerboard wall and headboard in our oldest’s. It’s the color that makes everything feel a little more fun.
Fruit Fool
A pink that holds its own alongside the brighter colors in this palette. It keeps things from feeling too primary and adds a warmth that the other colors don’t quite cover.
School House White
The neutral anchor upstairs– clean and bright in a way that lets the other colors do their thing.
How This Palette Came To Be
I originally ordered the upstairs colors for downstairs. I had reached a point where I was done playing it safe and I just went for it– full cans, no samples, no testing. When they arrived they were brighter than I was ready for.
So I made a snap decision to use the colors upstairs where the energy fit, and went back to the drawing board for the main floor.
That’s how Card Room Green entered the picture. It has plenty of color, but it’s easier to live with than Breakfast Room Green.
Sometimes wanting a colorful home doesn’t mean reaching for the most colorful option on the card. It means finding the version of the color you can actually commit to.
Want to build your own?
A color palette is the single most useful tool I have for making design decisions– big ones and small ones. It’s the reason I can walk into any room and know what to do next.
Inside the membership I take you behind the scenes on exactly how I built ours– the method, the decisions, how I use it room by room, and how to build one for your own home. It’s one of the first things we cover and it changes everything.
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