What are calming colours for a bedroom?

Why these colours work

What makes a colour feel calming is mostly low chroma and moderate contrast: surfaces that do not compete for attention. Studies of colour and emotion, notably Valdez and Mehrabian's 1994 experiments, found that saturation and lightness predict how arousing a colour feels more strongly than hue does, so a soft muted green, blue or warm neutral is calmer than a vivid version of the same hue. A bedroom is also mostly seen in low evening light, where muted mid-tones hold their colour better than very pale ones.

What decides it in your room

• When the room is used — a bedroom seen mostly at night and first thing in the morning
• Bedlinen and curtains, which often cover more area than the walls in view from the bed
• Personal association, which outweighs any general finding about colour and mood

Common mistakes

• Choosing a pale blue that turns cold and grey under warm bedside lamps
• Relying on the colour alone while keeping bright overhead lighting

Next steps

• Look at samples from the bed, in the lighting you actually use at night
• Keep the wall behind the bed calmer than any accent elsewhere

Lower-risk neutral options

Stronger accent options

Other options

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