How to Update Your Beige Home to Gray, Greige, or Taupe
Change Your Color Palette (Warmer to Cooler)
Is your beige feeling a lil’ blah? Are you bored with the warm Tuscan glory of your earth-tone-inspired home? Join the club; there are a lot of you.
Even though design and paint trends are warm again, full of beautiful shades of warm white, beige, and flexible off-whites, many are still trying to cool down their beige-on-beige color palettes.
Why?
They often want a) less beige and b) a fresher, cleaner look than many early 2000s beiges offer.
Beige-inspired homes are often chock-full of beige walls, carpet, and maybe even beige furniture. You may look around your room and think to yourself, ‘I’m drawn to gray, greige, or taupe, but how in the HECK do I change from beige to gray when my WHOLE FREAKIN’ HOME is beige?’
You keep on reading…
Remember, beige is neutral, and many neutrals are as flexible as a 10-year-old gymnast. So, while you may feel limited, you have a world of colors available to you-you need to know which direction to go in and pay close attention to your undertones & color DEPTH.
Please note: This blog post is about the HOW’S & WHY’S of updating a beige home. Near the end, I have a link to a blog post full of actual color ideas – but LET’S LEARN FIRST!
A QUICK SUMMARY OF UNDERTONES
If you subscribe to my free blog updates (drink the Kool-Aid—it’s gooooood), you hear me talk about undertones all the time (along with red wine, dogs, and mildly inappropriate topics). Let’s do a quick summary to get on the same path…
- Cool gray will have blue, green, or purple undertones (or a blend)
- Warm gray will have green or purple undertones
- Taupe has purple-pink undertones
- Greige has green undertones
Undertones are those sneaky ‘colors’ that wink at you once you’ve painted a wall with two coats and step back in your sweaty, exhausted glory to realize that your gray walls look blue or your beige walls look a bit pink.
The key to choosing a color that suits your beige finish is to determine which undertones you’re dealing with and which ones best suit your particular beige surface (carpet, tile, countertop, furniture).
It’s also about knowing that MOST interior beige finishes have an orange-pink undertone – not yellow.
REMEMBER, depending on the type of beige you have (strength and blend) and how much of it you have in your home; you might not be able to head in the gray/greige/taupe color direction you were hoping for. In this case, you might choose a more modern, warm paint color on your walls and select gray/greige/taupe for your furniture and accent pieces.
For example, this next beige tile doesn’t have a noticeable taupe, greige, or gray to warrant one of these colors on the walls—a cooler paint color would come out of nowhere and wouldn’t relate.
However, this next beige granite countertop has some flecks of taupe, meaning that the right depth of taupe could make a lot of sense on the walls or cabinets.
Why would taupe work with the above countertop? Because it already exists noticeably on the countertop, it would coordinate with the walls, making a visual connection—cool beans?
While it’s okay to stretch your room’s comfort zone, don’t stretch it OUT of its comfort zone, or it won’t look good.
As shown above, if your beige finish has gray, taupe, or greige in its palette, that’s often an easy win on the walls. However, when it is beige and ONLY beige, it’s not always as straightforward…
BEIGE FINISHES WITH COOL PAINT COLORS
Whether you’re dealing with beige carpet, countertop, backsplash, or tile (or several), there are two situations to consider…
1. If your room has only ONE beige finish and it doesn’t have any gray, greige, or taupe in it, as long as you choose a paint color that’s the same depth (or ideally) DARKER than your beige finish, you should be able to pull it off.
Warm finishes prefer cool colors that are darker than them.
The gray walls are okay with the beige carpet in this stairwell because there isn’t another beige for the gray walls to compete with. In this situation, the gray acts more like a ‘subtle compliment’ to the carpet – although I wish it were a bit darker.
However, if you got down to the foyer in this home and it had travertine tile, the gray walls would make a lot less sense, as you’d have TWO FINISHES with beige hues to try and connect with.
2. If your room has MORE THAN ONE beige finish and neither has gray, greige, or taupe in its palette, it starts getting tricky to add gray, greige, or taupe on the walls. Impossible? No, the odd tile/carpet combo can handle a non-beige wall color, but generally speaking, the more beige you have, the harder it is to branch out.
FUN FACT: A color that’s cooler than your beige surface can make it look warmer than usual due to the contrast between warm and cool.
This kitchen was a heavy-looking hot mess with its previously green walls…
It looks much better with a fresh new wall color…
The Best Paint Colors with Red Wood Stains
Many people want to tone down their beige carpet, countertop, or tile and make it look ‘less beige.’ To do this, they often choose cool paint colors. However, the cooler colors they choose often make their beige look even stronger.
Opposites attract and can ENHANCE each other.
WARM GRAY PAINT COLORS WITH BEIGE ROOMS & FINISHES
Warm gray paint colors have a wee-willy wink of brown and can often appear slightly purple or green (usually only blue when the exposure encourages it).
Via Kylie M Interiors Online Color Consulting
Warm grays (especially ones with a soft purple undertone) have a better chance of looking good with beige because the purple undertone can complement the typical ‘orange’ undertone of beige finishes.
However, these beige finishes with a pink or orange-pink undertone can be enhanced by the cooler undertones in warm grays (and cool grays). The undertones in your beige products should be pretty darn passive to handle a warm gray or have the gray you want to use in them (i.e., a tile with beige and gray-violet in its palette).
GREIGE PAINT COLORS WITH BEIGE CARPET, TILE, OR FURNITURE
Greige paint colors are grays with a good dose of beige and a subtle or not-so-subtle green undertone.
Paint Colour Review of Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Gray
Greige is a great transitional color as it has both gray and beige—often in decent doses. Is it as cool/gray as you were maybe hoping for? Probably not, but it can be a great ‘happy medium’ between where your home is and where you want to be (other than on a hot tropical island with Ryan Reynolds in a Speedo).
But remember, sometimes what YOU want for your home and what your HOME needs are two different things.
For example, even if this homeowner wants cool gray walls, her fireplace stone, drapes, and beige carpet tell her loud and clear that gray’s a bad idea (and luckily, she’s super happy with her beige walls)…
As shown in this next photo, a warm, soft tan was the best color choice for this room with the sofa, area rug, decor, and fireplace surround. A gray of any sort or even light greige wouldn’t have done it any justice.
Why?
Because the main finishes and furnishings don’t have any greige, it would come out of nowhere.
In this case, choosing a dark greige or gray-green as an ACCENT color would be the best way to listen to this space and blend it with the homeowner’s tastes.
Taupe and Greige – What’s the Big Difference?
THE BEST COLOR DEPTHS (LRV) TO UPDATE BEIGE
Homes with beige rarely suit the off-white range of the above colors (gray, greige, and taupe). Everything gets a bit too washed-out and non-committal for the depth of their beige finishes. And while there is the odd exception, it seems that most rooms with beige best suit paint colors in the light to light-medium (or darker) range when transitioning from beige to gray or greige.
This next bathroom and its overly pink tile (similar challenges to beige) looked even more pink with its green walls…
Look at how this room breathes a sigh of relief – and it’s allll about the paint colors…
And there’s an art to this, which you can learn more about here: How to Mix Beige & Gray: Warm & Cool. But for now, here’s the short n’ curly…
When choosing a color, you can get some good insights into how it may look via its LRV. If you don’t know what LRV is, it’s Light Reflectance Value. To keep things simple, it’s a number that every paint color has that tells you how light or dark a color is on a scale of 0-100. (Read ALL about it here—The Ultimate Guide to LRV).
In my Online Colour Consulting, I usually refer to colors with an LRV of approx. 65 or lower when coordinating with beige. Unless they’re beige, the higher LRVs (approx. 65+) don’t seem to connect as well.
Now, I know you’re hoping for some actual paint color, but those are a blog post unto themselves—it’s a big topic.
The Best Paint Colors to Update a Beige Home
A FEW TIPS WHEN CHOOSING COLORS WITH BEIGE FINISHES
Beige is pretty flexible as long as you follow a few simple guidelines…
- Most beige finishes have orange undertones (orange-pink, not orange-yellow). This undertone combo often suits violet undertones and green undertones. Blue can be hit and miss.
- Grayish off-whites and cool whites rarely work; they look gross…says me – that is my super-educated opinion.
- Any color that’s cooler than your beige surface will ideally be darker than it (or, at the very least, the same depth).
- An LRV of 65 or lower is a great starting place for your color search.
READ MORE:
The Best TRENDY Beige & Tan Paint Colors
The Best Warm Off-White Paint Colors that AREN’T BEIGE!
Light Greige & Taupe Paint Colors for Your Walls or Cabinets
The 12 Best Gray & Greige Sherwin Williams Paint Colours
Benjamin Moore’s Top 10 Gray Paint Colours
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ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 2020, UPDATED IN 2024
Hi Kylie. This is probably a strange question, but I haven’t been able to find the answer so I am hoping that you will know. I am growing my gray hair out, no more coloring for me. I am updating my wardrobe to reflect this change, no more warm colors for me. My question is, do I have to change my home’s interior colors also? I still love my beiges, olive greens, gold and travertine. What is your opinion?
Thank you,
Vicki
Hi Vicki! Very interesting.
Okay, so I’m no wardrobe expert, but I’ve found that what suits us for clothing is not just about hair colour, but about skin tone, so I would probably pay attention to that first and THEN the hair colour (as gray can be VERY flexible, whereas skin tone isn’t always as flexible).
When it comes to ALL of this, it’s about what you feel BEST in, not just wardrobe wise, but home-wise – and these DON’T have to be the same! I find that the clothing I feel the best in are colours that I wouldn’t wear at all – things just feel differently to me going from walls to t-shirts.
You might find that your skin tone (relating to wardrobe) still likes those warmer colours. Or maybe you switch to cooler colours, but you do the ‘autumn’ version of cool colours, so that they aren’t COLD colours and are a bit softer (BM Smoked Oyster and Carolina Gull would be good examples of this) and these colours will work with your olive greens/gold/travertine as they are all in the ‘earth-toned family’. It’s when you take the ‘earthy tones’ out of the, that they become more cold and icy (ie: a more genuine blue/purple/green without any gray or brown in it). If you take the gray/brown out of those cool colors, there could be a disconnect between wardrobe/home.
The fact that you say you still love your beige/olive/gold means to me that you should KEEP them and just tweak your wardrobe so that they are in the same family!
I hope that gives you some food for thought!
~Kylie
Hi Kylie
I’m having a real difficult time selecting a paint color for my living room. I’m considering you consult but I hesitance is can you actually find a color for me from photos I send you of my space, couch fabric and area rug. I’m quite sensitive to color and do see those undertones that pop out and just did to find the right color to paint. Please advise
Thanks so much
Joyce
Hi Joyce! I know, it’s hard to imagine that it works…but it does! The thing is, not only have I done thousands of e-designs, but I spent years in local homes, getting to know exposures/products/sizes. This means that when I look at your photos I have a pretty good idea of what I’m seeing, based on my hands-on experience. I’ll give you 3 options and explain them, so you can understand them. Plus there’s a follow-up email so we can tweak things if needed!
I hope that eases your mind a bit, I’d love to help!
~Kylie
In a new construction I’ve chosen White Viscon granite with white kitchen cabinets. I’m concerned about a paint color that will work in my huge open space that will include dining and living. All furnishings for these areas are warm Tuscany/autumn colors. I have Surya Caesar rugs 1053 and 1029. Do you think Sherwin Williams Anew Gray will work? What if I choose a darker color for the island and great room built-ins to tie it all together? What color would you recommend for that? Drywall people finish this week…please help!
Hi Jill, when it comes to personal questions like yours I would only be guessing! I do refer these to my E-design so that i can take a look at your space/lighting/furnishings and come up with colour options that actually make sense! It’s affordable, fun and I DO have a quick consult option so you can get it in 2-3 business days! https://www.kylieminteriors.ca/online-decorating-design-services/
Hope to chat soon,
~Kylie
We just painted all of the interior walls in my brand new home Balboa Mist. The house is west facing and the walls look lavendar! I’ve been in tears for days about it. What colors of furniture, etc. should we decorate with to make the walls look more gray and less purple?
Hi Jyll! Yes, Balboa can pick up more, dare I say – feminine undertones. The first step is don’t pair it with green, which can enhance the purple look of it or warm tones (yellow/orange/red). Sometimes the key with a colour like Balboa MIst (which might make you cringe) is to choose some grays that are as neutral as possible, but ALSO pair in some grays with a very vague purple undertone. If you ignore something and it’s the ONLY THING that has it, it can stand-out. Whereas if you slightly nod toward it, you can dilute it’s impact a bit. I’m sorry you’re so sad! Is there any place you could do a feature wall or a room or 2 you could paint a bit different to shift things a bit???
Hi Kylie,
I love all your posts. Always helps my life easy when making a decision. Just a little lost this time with whole house painting decision. We have an open floor plans with warm beige (w green undertones) walls, dark hardwood floors and dark stained cabinets and dark beige carport in rooms.
I want to change cabinets to white ( maybe SW origami white?) and want to change Walls to gray. (Options are SW Light french Gray, mindful and repose). Which would you suggest may go well. I’m confused if Warner mindful or cooler of the repose or French might work better. In this big 800 sq ft open living area.
I appreciate your help and can send a picture if needed.
Need to make decision in 2 days so I’m lost. Thank you in advance.
Hi Alicia! When it comes to questions like yours I do need to refer to my E-design, otherwise I’m totally just guessing. There are exposures to consider, countertops, tiles – all that jazz and if I offer something it’s just a guess. I do have the Quick Consult option, if you were to grab the consult with that Quick Consult option ASAP, I would be happy to bump you up and get you some answers! https://www.kylieminteriors.ca/product-category/interior-paint-palettes/
~Kylie
I’m considering painting my whole downstairs either SW popular Gary 6071 or Agreeable Gray 7029. I want more of a light, warm Greige instead of gray. Would one of these work? Should the ceilings be painted the same color, a deleted color of the wall color, or white. Our 2 story den is now painted in the sameness color as the walls, and looks good. Thanks for any help you can give.
Hi Linda! I do try to give as much info as I can on my blog, and if that doesn’t help, it might be time for a closer look with my E-design. With personal questions like yours, where I need to see the exposure/flooring/furnishings/etc… I’m hesitant to throw an idea out as I’d TOTALLY be guessing, which won’t do you any good if it won’t work!
You can check out my packages here if that interests you…https://www.kylieminteriors.ca/product-category/interior-paint-palettes/
~Kylie
Hi
My house is beige throughout. I repainted my maple cabinets chef white, the island dark grey, and the counters are a mostly black speckled gray and tan, then nothing looked right. I then painted the kitchen walls wine and it extends in to the living room as an accent wall. I painted the area where the kitchen table is Sherman Williams functional Gray and it looks lavender! I painted the rest of the living room Sherman Williams Agreeable Gray and it looks very baby blue! I would like new carpets and to paint the rest of the house also but am not sue what color to go with and how to make this gray work? I’m willing to paint a different gray but it seems like Agreeable Gray should have been the best choice? HELP!
Oh Suzanne, sounds like you’re having quite the time of it! Now without looking at photos it’s hard for me to say and I could easily send you on another wild goose chase. When it comes to personal questions, it can be best to go through my E-design, which is affordable and fun! This way I can look at photos and spend some proper time with it! https://www.kylieminteriors.ca/online-decorating-design-services/
~Kylie
Kylie,
I just remodeled the master bathroom but budget limited my ability to replace the travertine (the bathroom is quite large). I have beuatiful greige/tuape painted vanities but when I chose the paint–oops! It’s too blue around the tube area which has the most travertine.
Near the vanities and new counter tops the paint seems to blend but where the travertine is on the wall and more abundant–yuck! I used Repose from Sherwin Williams and that was clearly a poor choice. I’m slightly disappointed since I have a designer with the remodeling firm; however, color is a specialty and we didn’t really look at it in the tub area only near the vanities.
If I sign up for consult should I select ensuite bathroom or just bathroom? What is the difference from a consultation perspective.
Thanks in Advance.
Hi Michele, sorry for the delayed reply! You can choose EITHER option and you will get the same results – I’d be happy to help!
Hi Kyle,
My husband and I have enjoyed all your videos. We bought a new townhouse and want to paint it all one color. We are looking for a Greige. Kitchen cabinets are toasted antique. The counter tops, bathrooms and floors are a combination of browns and grays. Any suggestions for a beige with gray under tones that is not too dark.
We have looked at Accesible Beige, Agreeable Gray, Feather Down, Edgecomb Grey, Tapetry Beige, Elmira White, and Manchester Tan. Totally confused. Do not want yellow or pink undertones. Would really appreciate any suggestions.
HELP …… Thanks. BTW are furniture is gray and taupe.
Kathy
Hi Kathy! From the sounds of it, Edgecomb Gray could be an interesting choice, as could Accessible Beige. Colours can shift as you go from room to room with different finishes and EXPOSURES, so you will see some flexing, but those are two of my faves!
Hi Kylie.
Do you consider SW Aesthetic White a gross grayish off white? I am thinking of using it in a rustic lake villa which faces North and South, but does not get a lot of natural light. Warm orangeish oak woodwork, fireplace wall, and cabinets. Thinking of blue/green/gray accent pillows, otherwise fairly neutral. Lake view on North Side.
I have sampled it on the wall, but….LOVE your knowledge and inspiration!
Welllll, it depends on who you’re talking to as to whether it’s gross or not ;). I PERSONALY LOVE Aesthetic White, as it’s an off-white beige that leans into gray, which could help a bit with that cooler northern light without being like ‘legit beige’. I LOVE it :).