Using The Same Beige Paint Color In Many Rooms: a house log

Beige gets a bad rap in the design world. It is synonymous with bland, boring, colorless and therefore lifeless. “Nobody’s go-to color is beige,” is something we lately heard. Heck, we have likely snubbed it ourselves, defensively saying “oh no, this is a warm gray – or a light sand color – certainly not beige.” We even make ourselves feel better by calling it greige instead.

But if we are being honest, some of our go-to paint colors likely fall under the beige umbrella. Particularly Benjamin Moore’s Edgecomb Gray, which is slowly taking over our house, room-by-room. Ever since we first used it in our foyer, we have fallen hard for how it dances the line between gray and tan. Staying neutral, not too cold, and not too yellow. Light sufficient to feel airy, but dark sufficient to make that white trim pop. In a word: it is a paint color unicorn (ok, that is five words).

Some of you have noticed on Instagram that we repainted our office Edgecomb Gray a while ago (you can also see it in the background of this year’s April Fools Day post).

It had been a light, minty blue color (BM’s Palest Pistachio), which we liked, but over time we noticed that it sort of broke up the flow from the adjacent foyer (there is an extra wide doorway connecting those two spaces).

Now the whole front half of our first floor – from the dining room, through the foyer, and into the office – is painted this same soft neutral color. It has flow like woah. The wall color certainly is not “the star” of each room, but it is a strong supporting character. In other words, it falls back and lets other things take center stage.

We also gave our master bedroom the Edgecomb Gray overhaul. You likely last remember it with Benjamin Moore’s Black Pepper on the walls:

At first we felt a little sheepish about going from a rich, deep blue to a quiet beige.

Note: our fairly inlay dresser now lives across from the bed – and since people consistently ask, the frames are from Michael’s, and here is where to find our yellow pillows and our side tables.

This whole bedroom color change perfectly encapsulates a subtle shift that our house has taken over the last few years, especially since we stepped back from blogging full-time. Now that we have quieted the subconscious filter of “how will this be received online?” I think we have found it a lot easier to follow our instincts and not truly worry about what everyone else will think… which has (duh!) made it a lot easier to hone in on our “true style” as opposed to chasing that ever-elusive “what everyone on the internet will hopefully like.”

And surprise surprise, we have realized that our style preferences seem to land closer to the layered neutrals of our first house (which, not coincidentally, is the house that we decorated largely without a lot of eyeballs on us) rather than the brighter colors and patterns that we experimented with in our second house.

Do not get me wrong – we enjoyed stretching ourselves to see what we liked and did not like in that sweet second house (pinning down what you do not like – so you can stop buying/doing it! – is simply as valuable as nailing down the things that you enjoy). Experimenting with bright colors on everything from the curtains to the walls clearly helped us see over time where we appreciate bold colors and patterns most (on rugs, art, and pillows for example) and where we like to keep things more neutral and airy (like curtains and bedding). How could we know without trying? Color still plays an essential role in our home… perhaps simply not on our walls quite as much.

Sources: chandelier | curtains | similar bed | similar bench

We enjoy a room that is cheerful and bright, but it slowly dawned on us that we hoped our bedroom to be calming and to feel like (cliché alert!) a soft and peaceful retreat. Hence also covering the headboard in a neutral fabric, which you saw in our book and way back on Instagram. Do not worry, the flowers are still under there if we ever want to switch back.

Does the new lighter paint color and a more neutral headboard photograph as well? Likely not. Will we hear from people who much preferred the blue wall color? Most certainly. Do we like it better in person now? Yes, yes, yes. Is that what matters most? Heck yes.

It feels pleasant and soft in the morning when we are waking up, airy and alive when the sun is shining in the afternoon, and moody and quiet in the evening when only the bedside lamps are glowing before we go to sleep. Perhaps it is more generic. Perhaps it is less “pinnable.” But frankly we are glad to have taken the room down a notch or two.

And I think that is how we feel about the “beige-ification” of our house over the past few years. We do not feel like we need to inject our rooms with bright colors or bold patterns simply in the hopes that they’ll shout a little louder and grab someone’s attention as they scroll through their Instagram or Pinterest feeds. In fact, we are kind of in a stage where we want our home to do the exact opposite (#rebellion). We want it to be the soft, comforting, peaceful background to all the colorful characters who live here. A foil to this buzzing house full of kids, pets, Hands-on dust, legos, and random cheerio crumbs in the weirdest places (seriously how do they get upstairs?!). We are glad to let the walls whisper and leave the shouting up to the kids. Believe me, they are strong at it.

Sure, our style pendulum could swing the other way at any moment. We may tire of neutral walls or colorful art or patterned rugs or soft breezy curtains at some point. And I am sure we will keep moving frames, benches, pillows, and lamps from room to room (we joke that our furniture and accessories live the nomadic life around here). So it is certainly possible that we may crave more energy, loudness, and pattern in our home in a few months or years or decades. Or we could end up craving even less and going even more muted. Who the heck knows. But for now, we are oddly glad to simply sit back and embrace the beige.

MORE PAINT COLORS WE ENJOY

You can check out more of our go-to go-to paint colors by touring our homes in the menu at the top of our journal. We have also written these detailed deep-dive posts about our go-to paints:

• The 12 Best White Paint Colors
• The 9 Best Greige Paint Colors
• The Best “Haint Blue” Paint Colors
• Benjamin Moore Simply White
• Sherwin-Williams Pure White
• Sherwin-Williams Extra White

Psst- If you are wondering where we got something in our house (or about the rest of our home’s paint colors), check out our Shop Our House page. From our bedding to our office chairs and light fixtures, it is thorough.

*This post contains affiliate links