Best Paint Colors to Add Value to Your Home

Paint has the power to completely transform a room, and compared to other home remodeling projects, it’s a relatively quick and inexpensive update. Depending on the color you go with, the pay-off from a few cans of paint can be huge—and if you’re looking to sell your home, it could amount to a few thousand dollars. But how do you know which paint colors to choose?  Research from real estate marketplace Zillow suggests that certain paint colors in home decor can increase the amount a buyer is willing to offer on a home by as much as $5,000, depending on the value of the home. Based on this analysis, which involved nearly 1,300 recent or prospective U.S. homebuyers, paint company Behr teamed up with Zillow to unveil paint color recommendations that could boost your home’s value.

Most notably, light-blues turn out to be the best colors for your bathrooms.  Survey participants noted they’d be more interested in touring and buying a house with colors in home design that include a light blue bathroom—and willing to pay 1.6% more than expected. On a $290,000 home, that’s a boost of nearly $5,000. To capitalize on this preference, Behr suggests painting your bathroom a soothing color like Ethereal Mood MQ3-52.

Whether light or dark, blue proves to be one of the preferred colors in home buyers’ opinions. It’s shown to be a plus in primary bedrooms, where survey respondents gravitated toward deeper, moodier shades that help foster a cozy atmosphere. When used in the bedroom, dark blue paint colors like Sojourn Blue M500-5 were associated with a $1,500-increase in the home’s value (based on a $290,000 home).  Personally I find a dark blue color to be too dark – and dramatic.  From my experience showing properties to buyers, they immediately deduct money from their offer price to allow for painting over a dark paint color.  Having said that though, I looked at Martha Stewart’s suggested paint colors for bedrooms and it seems that nearly half of her recommended colors were dark.  Maybe it’s just buyers in Bethesda MD who don’t think very dark colors are the best paint colors for bedrooms.

Interior designers have observed a notable uptick in more contemporary, maximalist aesthetics, and color drenching is part of that trend.  Color drenchin involves painting every surface—walls, ceiling, baseboards, trim, doors—and saturating a space with a single color,” says interior designer Audrey Scheck of Audrey Scheck Design. “This creates an immersive experience that has a wow factor all on its own.”

You can opt for a hue that’s inky and rich—like emerald green, orange, or magenta—or you can try a color with a bit less punch, such as soft blue or creamy yellow. You can even control the saturation by choosing how much and where to apply the color. Whatever route you take, the technique of applying the same hue throughout your space instantly adds depth, dimension, and visual interest.

 “After years of minimalist design dominating the landscape, people are craving personality and energy in their homes and want to experience vivid, stimulating environments,” says Scheck. “There’s a certain vibrancy and playfulness that this trend brings to any space instantly, injecting a room with character.”

She points to other maximalist trends that lean into this all-in approach, such as mural installations, bold wallpaper, and “clustercore.” Interior designer Brittney Ferguson agrees, adding that color drenching is actually a more cost effective way to get that maximalist look. “I think we are seeing this colorful trend gain momentum because it is a super inexpensive way to make a huge statement,” she says. “It looks custom, thought out, and expensive. Wallpapering a dining room in a bright grasscloth could cost over $15,000—but you can get a similar feel with color drenching.”

It pays to keep things neutral when planning your palette of colors in home gathering spaces like the kitchen and living room. In the kitchen, crisp white paint colors like Polar Bear 75 could add more than $500 to your home’s value, while light-gray living rooms were linked to a $200 boost in the offer price.  What will we do when light gray goes out of fashion? 

“Color can evoke a strong emotional and psychological response to a space,” said Erika Woelfel, vice president of color and creative for Behr, in a press release. “Blues, grays, greens, and whites are timeless, calming colors that allow potential buyers to see a home as a fresh, clean slate. They can then picture themselves, and their personal furnishings, filling the space to make memories in years to come.”

27 Neutral Paint Colors and Tips from Experts On How to Use Them

The best paint colors add value to your home at resale.  Are there paint colors that can cost you money and turn away buyers?

The Zillow report also includes paint colors that could have a negative effect on a home’s perceived value. Across nearly every room, bright, boisterous hues were least attractive to the buyers surveyed. Bright red kitchens, for example, corresponded to a nearly $1,500 decrease in the average price buyers were willing to offer for the home, while buyers were least likely to want to purchase a home with a bright yellow kitchen.  Part of the turn off is personal taste and part is the realization that buyers will have to pay someone to paint the room in a more appealing hue.  Sellers frequently push back against a Realtor’s urging to neutralize the room or repaint because the current paint job is just tired and dirty.  Sellers say “The buyers can always paint and I am sure they won’t like the paint color I choose so why bother?”   The problem with that attitude is that most buyers don’t have the disposable income to repaint or the time when they have just paid the seller top dollar for the property.

Of course, choosing paint colors in home design is highly personal, and you should feel empowered to select shades you love that suit your decorating style. But if you’re thinking long-term about your home’s value or you are putting your home on the market shortly, it might be worth opting for paint colors that will appeal to a wide array of potential buyers.

If you are thinking of selling your home and you need help with staging and painting, please give us a call at 240-401-5577 or email us at lise@lisehowe.com.  We have lots of contractors who can help get your home ready for market.