Neutral paint colours

Murphybear

We were offered a 3 bed house in an over 60s development.  Before we moved in they redecorated and replaced all the carpets.  We didn’t have a choice of walls, magnolia or magnolia, but we could choose our own carpets from a small selection.

We had quite a lot of furniture so by the time we had settled in and put lots of nice pictures on the walls and put up some shelves we could hardly notice the colour of the walls. 

julicorn

Grey isn't great, but honestly magnolia is my absolute nightmare when it comes to wall colours (after living in rentals with exactly that colour for at least 1 too many years). Why not just paint the walls white when renting out a flat? 

Darkslider

My MSE approach (sorry if this has been done) I wanted something in between brilliant white and magnolia but only wanted to pay trade emulsion prices not £25 for 2.5l of 'dulux ivory cream' or some other rubbish. 
I bought a big tub of white and one of magnolia and mixed it 2:1, got exactly the shade I was looking for at something like £45 for 30l. 

mrsmsebastian

Personally I like grey, I think it depends how you present it overall. With a little splash of colours with soft furnishing and ornaments it will not look dull.

RS2OOO

mrsmsebastian said:

Personally I like grey, I think it depends how you present it overall. With a little splash of colours with soft furnishing and ornaments it will not look dull.

Ha! Same wallpaper as us on the "feature wall". They seem to have stopped selling it now, possibly a sign the grey fad is over.

You can get some really nice results with a grey/yellow theme, but not easy to get the balance right.

JosephK

As previously stated, not a fan of grey but that's me, what works for one person won't for another.

Often, for no obvious reason, a colour scheme that works in one house won't in another. We had a light coffee (yes, that was shade name of paint) scheme that we liked in one house but when we repeated it on moving house, it just didn't suit the room so we quickly changed it.

Slinky

I was looking at carpets in a flooring shop at the weekend. All of them bar 2 books of swatches were shades of grey, beige or greige. There was one book of brighter colours, and one of some dull patterns.

We have pale grey in our lounge, but that was just to get away from the barley white we painted throughout the rest of house when we rented it out. Can't wait for our building work to be done so we can decorate properly. We've been here 2.5 years and not really got started yet on making it ours.  I look back at the pictures of our former home and wish we could have brought it with us.

RS2OOO

In the early 2000's all new builds seemed to have mocca/fudge coloured feature walls.

Iirc that was followed by bright flowery wallpaper on feature walls.

Then everything was painted white for years.

phoebe1989seb

I'm not a fan of grey either, but I'd much rather have that than brilliant white or magnolia 🙄

We painted the hallway of a previous house a very dark grey (my dad referred to it as 'battleship', lol!) in about 1993. It was a Victorian 'villa' type property with a few original features remaining.

I was heavily into the idea of a print room look, so painted the original lincrusta and dado rail dark grey - which had to be specially mixed as that dark a shade wasn't available then, unless you wanted undercoat! - with a bright yellow above. To this I added painstakingly cut out photocopied swags as a border above the dado as well as other print room type prints glued to the wall 😉

We like deep, saturated, bold colours so these days the palest colours we have are F&B 'Setting Plaster' (bathroom) and Craig and Rose 'Pale Oak' (kitchen).

Our house - 400 years old - was a repo that had previously been tenanted for a while and the colour scheme when we purchased was a mix of Barney purple and magnolia, so no neutrals (or hideous brights!) for me 😁

When selling a previous old property our EA suggested repainting in neutrals. We took his advice in some rooms. Our buyers later told us they'd have preferred our darker colours and when they sold we noticed they had repainted those neutral rooms in deeper tones.....

Racky_Roo

My new build came with painted grey walls, it was very pale, almost white. The woodwork is eggshell white and I have oak doors. The flooring downstairs is LVT and yes, grey carpets on the stairs and upstairs.

I've repainted most rooms now (been there a year) due to personal choice but the grey was a lot more livable than magnolia which I would have had to paint out immediately. It was also a great base for the new colours as it was so light it didn't impact the new colours