Q: Hi guys! I was snooping around your blog to try and find a floor plan of your new home with the colors you used for each room (like you did in the post from Feb 24/2010) but I didn’t find one! I would L-O-V-E to see what your new house looks like now, with a visualization of the color scheme per room. Is this possible, or am I asking way too much? HAPPY NEW YEAR by the way! – Danielle
A: We are so glad you asked — this has been on our list for a while. After Danielle left that comment, we moved the request up our priority list and created an updated color-coded floor plan for our current home. We previously made a similar palette map for our first house, which was fun to look back on and see how our color preferences evolved. Below is the current house’s color palette as it stands (we still plan to paint the guest bathroom and spare room). Some colors are harder to spot in the floor plan — for example, the back of the dining-room built-ins are a dark teal and the office and Clara’s closet have stencils — but assembling the plan in Photoshop helped visualize the main paint choices. Note: click here for a full list of these paint colors.
One pattern we noticed is how bright wall colors are often balanced by neutrals in the same room. For instance, our kitchen has a greenish-yellow wall color but features white cabinets and counters, a soft gray backsplash, and brown cork floors to ground the palette. Conversely, rooms with more neutral wall colors get livelier through textiles and accessories — patterned curtains, bold rugs, colorful pillows, painted furniture, and strong artwork.
For comparison and context, here’s the color palette we used in our first house. We still love blues and greens with neutral tones, but our current home shifts from creams and tans toward taupey grays and introduces plums, pinks, and a warm yellow-green to keep the overall scheme from feeling cold. In a smaller house, the sea-glass and soft neutrals helped maintain an airy feeling. With this larger layout, we can afford to introduce more color in select rooms without breaking visual flow.
We’ve seen beautiful homes painted the same color throughout, and we’ve seen beautiful homes where every room is unique. Our approach lands somewhere in between: a handful of recurring colors applied thoughtfully across a few spaces. Repeating a few key tones helps rooms relate to each other and maintain flow, while small differences — like painted built-in backs, patterned curtains, or a painted door — keep rooms from feeling cloned.
For example, the living room and dining room share a soft gray wall color. The dining room gets a boost from deep teal on the back of its built-ins, colorful curtains, and a bright yellow door, while the living room brings in a green geometric rug, colorful pillows, softer tone-on-tone curtains, and dark-painted beams for contrast. That way, neutral walls allow us to layer in more pattern and texture, whereas rooms with vibrant wall colors rely more on neutral furnishings and finishes.
One clear shift from our first house is a willingness to use patterned and colorful curtains in many rooms. In the past we favored white curtains almost everywhere, but now textiles are a major way we introduce color and pattern throughout the home.
Comparing photos highlights the change: our first living room relied on tonal layering and softness, while the current living room uses larger patterns, bolder colors in accessories, and higher contrast elements like dark beams and a deep sofa to create a more dynamic space.
Another way we bring vibrant color into the house is through art and painted furniture. The office, for example, gets energized by green chairs and a colorful gallery wall, while neutral elements like white cabinets, a wood counter, and a jute rug keep the space balanced and grounded.
We also use DIY elements to introduce personality — the homemade headboards in both bedrooms add pattern and color, and bold geometric rugs help define those spaces.
The green headboard in the guest room was actually something we used in our first house as well. Back then, the room was more subdued with tan walls and white roman shades. Now the same pop of green sits among brighter pillows, patterned textiles, and layered rugs.
For contrast, here’s a snapshot of our first bedroom compared to the current bedroom. The love of cozy, layered bedrooms remains, but the current version features more saturated pillows, a patterned headboard, and a bold rug for extra character.
We still include quiet, tone-on-tone moments to balance the brighter choices. Small spaces like the sink nook, our hallway of frames, and the laundry room tend to stay calmer so they don’t feel crowded. For example, the laundry has a soft avocado wall, but keeps most elements neutral — white cabinets, white appliances, natural light fixtures, and cork floors — so the small footprint feels open.
On the other hand, some larger rooms allow for slightly more adventurous wall choices. The hall bathroom, for instance, has a gray paint with a plum undertone that reads differently depending on the light, plus colorful art, a bright window treatment, and teal knobs on the vanity to punch up the palette.
So that’s the long version: an updated, color-coded floor plan and a recap of how we balance neutrals with pops of color around the house. Posts like this feel like a little time capsule for us — a snapshot of our current tastes that we can look back on as rooms continue to evolve. How do you like to decorate? Do you prefer the same paint color throughout your home, a different choice for every room, or a small, repeating palette used in several spaces?
Psst — For a more exhaustive tour of our first house followed by all of the before-and-afters of our current house, click here and then here.