The Best Bedroom Colors for 2022

When creating a color scheme for your home, the general rule is to use the colors you love. However, studies indicate color can impact everything from your appetite to how well you sleep. That’s why it’s essential to think long and hard about your bedroom color scheme before you commit to it.

Colors for a Good Night’s Sleep

For the best night’s sleep, you want to create a relaxing retreat, one where you can unwind and pamper yourself. Some colors lend themselves to that, while others energize you and make it harder to fall asleep. Even if you doze off right away, the wrong colors can impact just how soundly you sleep at night.

In general, muted colors work best for your bedroom walls. Light blues, soft greens and shades of white, beige and gray are some of the best choices. When unsure about which color to use as your base, you may want to go with blue, though. Participants in a 2018 study perceived blue as a more positive and calming color than others. Green was the second choice, followed by violet, orange, yellow and red.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use a stimulating color like red in your bedroom. You just have to use them wisely. Instead of painting your entire bedroom burnt pumpkin, choose a light shade of salmon and use some orange accents to incorporate your favorite color into the room. A fan of yellow? Go with a light cream-colored yellow, like Cotton Puff from Dunn Edwards Paints.

Bedroom Colors to Avoid

While you can incorporate many of your favorites into your bedroom, you should avoid some. For example, red can increase your fight-or-flight instinct, something you don’t want right before bed. Bright pinks, purples and oranges can also be too vibrant for the bedroom. Similarly, choose beige over dark brown, which may evoke negative associations like uncertainty and boredom.

Technically, black isn’t a color. It’s the absence of light. There are reasons to incorporate it into your bedroom color scheme and reasons you might want to avoid it. First, like brown, it can have negative connotations, including death, fear and sadness. It can also make your bedroom feel small and dark if you go overboard with it. However, used sparingly, black can ground a room and help make it feel calming and relaxing.

Ready to pull the trigger on a color? Not so fast. When shopping for bedroom paint, you’ll want to avoid glossy finishes as well. Gloss can reflect light, and the light can stimulate your brain. Instead, go with a flat or matte finish.

Popular Bedroom Colors for 2022

In the world of color, blue or green can be broad terms. Even countless shades of white exist to color your bedroom walls. This list dives a little deeper into the suggested colors above, giving you specific paint colors to inspire your color scheme:

Blue: One of the most calming colors, blue is a great choice for the bedroom. If you want to paint all four walls, consider a light blue like Behr’s Soft Cloud or After Rain. Like Sherwin-Williams’ Aleutian, a slightly darker blue would work well paid with light beige or white bedding and natural elements like wood furniture and a bamboo area rug. Used sparingly on one wall or to highlight an architectural feature, navy would be great. Or try the rich, jewel-toned Deep Sea Dive by Sherman-Williams.

Green: Both Sherman-Williams’ and Behr’s color of the year is a shade of green that would work in the bedroom. The Sherman-Williams color of the year, Evergreen Fog, is reminiscent of olive and could cover all four walls matched with bedding and furniture. Behr’s Breezeway is a whitish-green that will give your room a bright, airy feel. As you can with blue, you can opt for darker green as long as you limit it to one wall. Too much of any dark color will make your bedroom look small.

White: White isn’t strictly white. It can be tinted with hints of beige, gray, yellow, red or other colors. Dunn-Edwards alone has 115 different whites in its collection. So, if you want a relaxing bedroom but have your heart set on yellow walls, you can choose something similar to Dunn Edwards’ Sung Cottage. Or, if you’re a fan of red, you may find the company’s Strawberry Dust a suitable—and soothing—alternative.

Gray: A standard color for home walls today, gray works well in the bedroom. Stick to lighter shades like Sherman-Williams’ Sea Salt or Dunn-Edwards’ Cold Wind for a relaxing, spa feel. Like white, gray can have hints of other colors like blue or green. And you can go dark as long as you use it sparingly.

Beige: This tried-and-true option lends a natural feel to the bedroom. Consider pairing a standard beige like Sherman-Williams’ Accessible Beige with white, green or brown accents and wood furniture. For a trendy twist, go with greige instead. A blend of gray and beige, greige provides a lovely backdrop for almost any accent color.

Before you buy paint, bring paint chips home from the store or order one of Sherman-Williams’ 8″ x 8″ peel and stick samples of the company’s most popular colors ($3.95 each or $3.50 each if you order four or more). Paint colors can look different in the store than they do on your wall because the light in your house is different. Stick the paint sample to your wall and leave it there for at least one day, noting how it looks at different times of the day.

Creating a Bedroom Color Scheme

Once you’ve figured out your wall color, it’s time to plan a color scheme. This will give your bedroom a professionally designed look. You can search online for bedroom color scheme ideas and follow the example in a design you like. Or you can create a custom design, taking into account your bedspread or artwork, for example.

To create a color scheme, it’s important to understand what exactly one is. A color scheme is a collection of complementary colors that create a unified look. There are several approaches to color schemes.

Monochromatic: In a monochromatic color scheme, one color dominates the room. Think gray in the bedroom. The walls might be a light gray, while the bedding is a whitish-gray. You might have an ash gray chair next to a dark gray bookcase, a charcoal gray throw and a lampshade sporting yet another shade.

Analogous: This color scheme features three colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. Usually, the middle color acts as the dominant color while the colors on either side serve as the accent.

Complementary: Instead of using nearby colors, this option pairs colors directly across from each other on a color wheel. For blue, this would mean orange. So, you might paint your walls blue and hang a predominantly orange painting using this color scheme in the bedroom.

There are other color schemes such as split-complementary, triad and tetradic. These will give your bedroom a richer, more layered look because you are using more colors. However, for the same reason, they are more complicated to implement.

Should I focus on Warm or Cool Colors?

As a general rule, your bedroom should feature cool colors. These colors make you feel calm and relaxed such as blue, green and gray. Warm colors—red, yellow and orange—make you feel energized and can keep you from falling asleep. Not surprisingly, you want to avoid these colors.

However, that doesn’t mean you have to ban them from the bedroom. If you make a cool color the dominant one in the room, you can decorate with warm ones. Going back to the example of complementary colors, blue offers a cool contrast to orange’s warmth. Paint your walls with blue and use the complementary shade of orange for splashes of color around the room.

Although black and white aren’t really colors, they can add coolness and warmth to a room. White typically acts as a cool color, while black acts as its warm counterpart. Because you want a cool, relaxing space, make white your dominant color in the bedroom and accent with black.

Ready-Made Bedroom Color Schemes

If you feel underqualified to choose a color scheme, you can simply do an online search as mentioned above. Popular color schemes come and go. (Remember the light blue and beach bedrooms of the 1980s and the jewel tones of the 1990s?) But these ideas are classics you’ll love:

White and black
Light blue and white
Champagne and lavender
Light gray and ivory
Periwinkle blue and pale yellow
Gray and pink (add some silver for pizzaz)
Lavender and white

Putting It All Together

Once you’ve chosen your bedroom colors, you’ll need to plan to achieve a professional look. The 80-20 rule is one popular approach. This rule states that 80 percent of your room should be composed of neutral colors, and only 20 percent should feature bolder ones. For example, if you wanted to use a black and white color scheme in your bedroom, 80 percent of your room should be white and only 20 percent of it black.

Another approach is the 60-30-10 rule. With this approach, 60 percent of the bedroom would be the dominant color, 30 percent a complementary color and 10 percent an accent color. If you opt for cream-colored walls, you’d want to make sure cream accounted for 60 percent of the room’s color, a complementary gray color another 30 percent of the room and pink accented the remaining 10 percent. If you can’t limit yourself to just one accent color, you can divide that last 10 percent into two colors that occupy 5 percent of the room. Neither approach is an exact science, so play with adding more of one color and subtracting another until you get your desired look.

Ways to Add More Color

How do you inject color into the room when the balance feels off? Try adding one or more of the following items:

Throw pillows: Not only do throw pillows give your bed a plush look, but they can add a much-needed pop of color. This is a good place for warm, bold colors that are too stimulating for the bedroom walls.

Curtains: You don’t want to go too bold, but if you need a little color to offset neutral walls, curtains might just do the trick. Take into account just how much the curtain’s color will show, though. If the curtains will be closed most of the time, their color will play a much bigger role than curtains that remain primarily open.

Lampshades: Whether on your nightstand lamp or the focal point of a floor lamp, shades can offer a bright note in an otherwise dull bedroom. Not finding your dream color? You can purchase fabric and cover your current lampshade.

Artwork: One of the most obvious ways to add color is through artwork. Don’t purchase a piece of art simply because it has the right color. Make sure the piece is one you enjoy. In other words, if you’re not an Andy Warhol fan, don’t buy a print because it has the right colors. Keep shopping. You’ll find something you like.

Plants: Greenery brings nature into your bedroom. It also gives the space a spa-like feel. If green is part of your color scheme, plants are an obvious choice. But don’t limit yourself to green. You can use white roses as an accent or a bouquet of sunflowers. Trying to incorporate turquoise? Put a nondescript green plant in a turquoise pot.

Ready to Move?

If an upcoming move has got you thinking of redecorating, keep your focus on your new bedroom by hiring movers. Moving.com has an extensive network of reputable and reliable movers who can do all the heavy lifting as well as pack and move your entire house. And, because they’re licensed and bonded, you don’t have to worry about damages. You can spend your time planning the look of your new home and shopping for paint, new furniture and all the other fun stuff.