The Most Dangerous Color to Paint Your Walls

Well, it's been a year, but I'm back to blogging! What can I say but the old refrain, "I've been busy." And one of the things that's kept me most busy has been interior painting in Asheville.

This year we're starting to see a little more color sneaking in. I know Maximalism has been a big trend in Architectural Digest for quite awhile, and it's finally starting to come to our mountain town.

I've already blogged about picking paint colors and how to paint with bold colors, but there's one painter's secret I haven't mentioned, which is how to choose the best version of the most dangerous color: Yellow.

Of course, yellow is literally the color of danger, at least here in the USA, where it's the most common choice for warning signs. But that's not what I'm talking about.

In my experience, yellow is also the most common source of "color regret." That is, it's easy to choose the wrong yellow when painting your walls.

Not that golden tones are always a bad choice. One might even say that yellow is a classic color. After all, Thomas Jefferson painted many walls in Monticello a glorious egg yolk color, and we also see it in other historic homes such as Harewood House in Yorkshire, England.

A doorway in Harewood House, with a medallion by Thomas Chippendale.

The trick with yellow is that it basically comes in two varieties. The "safest" yellow to pick for your walls is a warm version that skews toward orange, like we see in Harewood House.

​Here's a lovely little villa in a similar color.

The trouble seems to come in when people accidentally choose a yellow that skews toward green. Here's an example of what I mean.

This will show up differently depending on your computer monitor, but at regular settings you'll see a more acidic color. This "acid yellow" is the one that people generally regret using, even if it's toned down.

It can be harder to tell the difference on a color chip, so I recommend getting a small jar of your proposed color and painting it on a piece of poster board so you can test it out on different walls and in different light.

If you don't like the "egg yolk" yellow, another possibility would be to choose a grayed-down version. My wife actually chose a pistachio greenish-yellow for our home, and it looks great.

However, it's got a lot of gray (and a lot of white) in it, so that in some lights you can't even see the color.

But don't let me scare you away from bright colors! Especially because we're here to help make sure that your interior painting is done right the first time.

Call Today to Get a New Look