You might not want that paint color.

A counter-intuitive approach to colorways

Friends ask me now and then to write a guide for choosing paint colors, but I fail to deliver. It’s a topic I have shied away from for a few reasons to do with the sun and psychology.

First, the way that each room receives its light sources, its particular orientation toward the sun, is quite distinct; a paint color that looks lovely in one space sometimes looks terrible in another. Second, I choose colors based more on intuition than calculation; I like to feel out the space. Certain rooms suggest to me (or at least this is my experience) that they should be green or cream or peachy mauve. To try to give instructions about this feels futile. My unconventional way of discerning the “right” color for a room works most of the time when I can be in the room. Furthermore, getting that color right comes down to coordinating the interior life of the home owner with the actual potential of the room. So, although some decorators can provide helpful advice without an in-person meeting, I’ve hesitated, uncertain that I could offer anything truly serviceable.

However, while reading a book on education, I recently re-encountered a theme that, upon reflection, offered a helpful frame for discerning colorways. (Choosing the best tint or shade of that color is not within the aims of this piece, although perhaps I will write on that in the future.)

Within the context of ennobling children’s varying temperaments, and in a short segment on the importance of color, the writer discusses how different colors benefit different children. For a sanguine, for example—a generally cheerful, adventurous personality—the writer recommended that her room be painted yellow. Like a mirror lifted to her own nature, the bright color inspires the sanguine toward a more thoughtful, contemplative disposition—one that, although less dominant, nevertheless resides within her. According to the writer, the melancholic child, on the other hand, benefits from a soft, blue room, which calls forth his sunny, joyful counter-nature.

Moses Harris, “Prismatic Colour Wheel,” 1766

Such a counter-intuitive suggestion rests on a pretty profound understanding of how we relate to our surroundings. Whereas fairly common thought would advise painting the sanguine child’s room blue in an attempt to quiet his excitability and paint the melancholic’s room yellow with hopes of drawing him out of his tendency toward the negative, doing the opposite suggests that the person holds the steadying/balancing force within him or herself. In this ideal, we naturally supply the element that’s needed to make a whole.

A helpful parallel might be the direction that functional medicine takes in its treatment of health and the body. Rather than trying to cover up or shock the body into action, it wants to call forth and support the person’s own instinct toward healing, even, at times, by presenting the body with an herb or remedy similar to its unwell state. This kind of healing focuses on the body’s response more than the force of the medicine.

To look back again at how we experience and respond to color, I wonder now if more important than colors’ action upon us are our souls’ responses to them.

This underscores the theory that painting rooms cream or white encourages creativity and liveliness. You’d think that a brightly-painted room would draw forth creative work, but the gentle blankness of a well-chosen neutral is like an invitation. When I imagine a boldly-colored room, although the color itself might be exciting, it ultimately smothers my sense of creativity. Thus, Emily Henderson’s advice that if you are a person who likes color, you should paint your home with neutrals.

A case study: I have been considering hanging wallpaper in our family’s breakfast room for a few years now. It’s one of the projects for which I’ve struggled to grasp a clear vision. (I find I have a much clearer imagination for other people’s homes!) At last, though, we thought we had decided on a paper and hung the sample on the wall for a few weeks. It is a bright and dynamic pattern featuring sandhill cranes and my favorite shade of green. I decided, finally, after those weeks of wanting to love the pattern and its drama, that although the wallpaper exhibits the energy and brightness that I want the room to hold, to hang it likely would overwhelm that vision and become oppressive. In other words, I don’t want the wallpaper to do the work for me.

Wardrobes seem to follow the same pattern. The colors and patterns and silhouettes that attract us with promise could in fact cause the opposite when we are wearing them.

With all this in mind, I’ve wondered what our current paint color trends suggest about our culture’s interior state. Does our fascination with “moody” rooms belie a desire for levity? Does the recent maximalism craze reflect an overstimulated disposition—one that’s asking for simplicity and rest? I am sure there are limits to this mental exercise and risks of intense self-consciousness, of course, but it is an interesting one to trace in moderation.

The takeaway on discerning paint colors is not groundbreaking: We must first look closely at the function of our homes’ rooms, at the kind of mood or disposition best suited to those functions (not the room’s mood—but our own), and consider the colorway that complements it best. But, we should also ask ourselves if the first color we think of will indeed evoke the affective experience we want or need, or if another perhaps less obvious or counter-intuitive one might be more fitting, might actually inspire our souls. Although these decisions should coordinate with the natural light available, if the activity of the room requires a good deal of energy, a calming, cool hue may be best. If it requires relaxation, perhaps a warm one.

Even if we end up painting with the color that initially occurred to us—if that one matches the interior disposition best suited to the function of the room—I hope this color theory provides a helpful angle from which to think about our homes and how we relate to them. As with many theories, this one is still in progress and subject to revision. Maybe it at least gives a new vantage on our children and how color might ennoble their virtues or the beautiful way that our persons are ordered toward wholeness.

---

A housekeeping note: While I am away from Instagram, this platform will be the surest way to keep in touch with questions, topic proposals, and such.