Agree with above poster. I don’t have an open floor plan so I get different colors, but the color you and I choose might not be what a buyer would choose. You don’t want the buyer to think they will immediately need to paint. Personally, I’d paint a soft white or the perfect greige if there is such a color. While grey and beige are both great neutrals, the wrong grey can turn off the warm folks (like me) and the beige won’t appeal to the cool folks.

Yep, exactly what your realestate agent and DLM2000 said: painting everything a fresh neutral color will allow the buyers to envision what they want to do with the space. It's less concern that a bold color will be off-putting and just the freshness of the paint can help a space look like it's been well cared for.

In my experiences. having different colors in bedrooms and bathrooms wasn't detrimental to resale.

(we did freshen up the paint of course)

but if that's your realtor's strong advice, in your area, and you're going to paint anyway, I'd go for easiest thing and pick one color. The trick is to make sure this color goes with your existing elements. Then it'd feel natural and not forced.

If a room is dim and doesn't have a lot of light-I wouldn't do white

If the counters are warm granite-I'd keep the paint in warm realm. If they're white and gray marble-obviously the opposite.

Etcetera.

Cohesiveness matters. More than what neutral (or color) it is exactly. And whether it's allover the place.

And if needed-I'd rather leave/refresh same color than risking something that doesn't look great in the room.

Don't try to guess what exactly will please people..but harmony, has the most chance of pleasing everybody.

Yes, all rooms should be the same color. Please don't use gray--ick...and it's on it's way out. An off white would be great. Really white, white often looks too institutional.

They don't all need to be the same color, but they should be the same value.

Gray may be on the way out but it’s not “ick” to all! Personally I prefer gray over beige and white as an accent only, but that’s me. ;)

Bedrooms and baths don't need to be the same color, but should have a fresh coat of light color paint. That being said, a 5 gal bucket of light neutral paint is cheaper than a bunch of 1 gal cans of different colors. The color of the neutral depends on your decor.

I’m not an agent but I think the blues and light yellow could be fine if they are muted enough. Very light yellow can read as cream. Blues can read as gray. It depends how much pigment is in them.

If the paint needs to be refreshed, then go more neutral if you don’t have enough leftover paint.

I recently painted a blue room greige and it lost a lot of its appeal. But it needed new paint, so I invested in greige instead of more blue.

If you have a lot of woodwork, pick a complimentary color/neutral. Sometimes a color in a bedroom can showcase woodwork better than a neutral. The new owners may want to put their favorite color in there, and they might see how cool the woodwork looks with a defined color.

Also if you are leaving your furnishings for showings, don’t pick a neutral that would make the room with furniture seem dreary. You want the buyer to feel like it’s their home, and that they feel welcome, not depressed or bored.

If you look at a lot of homes online, they all have the same greige carpet and walls. The homes don’t stand out. Think about what makes your home stand out and be memorable (in a way that makes buyers want it more). Then use that insight to choose your paint strategy.

I personally like neutrals in living areas, and a cohesive palette of near-neutrals (with a definite hue) in the bedrooms, and an appropriate color in the bathrooms that makes the tile look amazing. If possible, get large swatches of your chosen paint colors so that you can arrange them in a fan and they look like they belong together.

I also vote all the same, a “greige or similar” as you suggested is exactly right. It will be appreciated by buyers who, as someone else suggested, can take their time personalizing the rooms to their taste. It will also photograph and show nicely. Nothing ick about greige or gray. Personally when selling I googled “Benjamin Moore best selling grays” and “Benjamin Moore best selling neutrals” and came up with a lot of great options. (Edgecomb Gray worked great for me.) Good luck with your sale!

Any wood will be best if lighter in tone for photos but that’s a lot to deal with if your house is full of mahogany. ;)

Thanks everyone. I am going to go with all one color on the warm side, but light. The ceilings will be white as is traditional in a house like mine, and the walls just dark enough to offset the white so it doesnt' look like a big white box. We are nearly completly moved out so none of our furniture will be in the home. Agent said he will bring in some staging furniture if it seems necessary. So we just need a color that goes with the existing wood trim and flooring.

Makes monetary sense not to get gallons of different colors and just get a big bucket of one.

Looking online I am thinking something like HL Touch of Sun which is in my new house, but may be too yellow for my older, darker home. I also liked SW Flour White, but need to see them in the house to know for sure.

Thanks :)

Accessible beige. Light enough, warm enough, gray enough, beige enough.

Realtors here, say no yellow paint, because it turns off buyers. Some realtors are saying paint everything light green. While that wouldnt turn me off from buying (neither would yellow or most any other color) because, I paint every single wall in a new to me house anyway. It seems, that some buyers these days, are so picky, that even a paint color can be a deal breaker. Ridiculous to me.

It is sad that people can't look beyond a paint color or are too lazy to want to paint when they move in. I would of never bought my present house if it was based of the colors of the walls. I don't like green (except money and plants), beige or orange and I had all three in the house. Now painted outside brick house would be a deal breaker for me. A painted brick/stone fireplace would make me hesitant.

I'm a Realtor and have discovered, long ago, that so many buyers really have a difficult time imagining the space as their own if the property is too colorful. When we agent's see that word "colorful" in the description of the property interior we know what to expect so we can prepare the buyers before showing the property. There seem to be three different types of buyers when it comes to paint colors:

• the buyers are too busy to work on the property at all. They want to find something that they can move into and get on with their busy lives without having to spend time painting or have the disruption of bringing in professional painters. Time is critical for these buyers.
• the buyers are too overwhelmed to paint and won't even consider taking on the painting themselves for fear of making a mistake. This is a large portion of the first time home buyer market where they have limited funds in purchasing their first home and painting the interior or exterior is just not in the budget for the foreseeable future.
• the rest of the buyer market that has no issue seeing around sellers colors and either enjoys painting or has the ready resources financially to hire professional painters and the creative desire to paint and decorate their new home. This is a small percentage of the buyer's I work with and in general, the creativeness is more difficult to find than the money.

In general very colorful homes sell for less, even in my area of S FL where color is expected and appreciated.

Freshly painted rooms in a neutral color help position your home favorably in the market.

Your Realtor will know what colors resonate with buyers in your area.

Before and after photos of the LR of my vacation house. It lingered on the market for a year. People couldn't get past the faux painted walls (some thought it was wallpaper). I delisted, painted LR, kitchen and entry hall the same so when you entered everything matched and tweaked some of the staging. First lookers made close to full asking cash offer and wanted to close in two weeks. We closed just under thirty days....they even bought most of the furniture in a separate contract. Coincidence? Maybe, but it was worth a couple of gallons of paint.

Be true to the farmhouse. Select a warm white in a lower sheen such as eggshell. If the trim is painted, paint the trim the same color as the walls using a semi-gloss sheen.

A slightly warm white will be in keeping with the farm house vibe. You can go look at the Joanna Gaines Magnolia colors and find a nice white. I like SW Creamy.

I find grey depressing. And, I think it's a fad. I've spent years trying to rid houses of green. I love color, but for your purposes, white.

You want to attract the maximum number of buyers, not please yourself. You have already moved out. White. It's the ultimate neutral.

"Grey is a fad" Ugh!! What does that even mean people?? Grey as a wall color has been around for ages!! People in the recent past have just been using it more because it works well as a neutral....just like beige. That being said, as a past realtor myself, Denita is absolutely right. There are many buyers out there who just cannot get past the color of a room. Seems hard to believe, but it's true. Lighter colors just work better as they make a room feel larger, more open, airy and clean. Good luck with your house sale :)

Benjamin Moore Manchester Tan is a good light neutral that works with almost any color next to it. It can read warm or cooler depending on the light and surrounding furniture/textiles. I painted it in one bathroom and then the whole house and considering adding it to our bedrooms too as they need paint soon.

Hmm, well, all I can say is that it must depend on the area. Not far from Denita's area we recently tried to buy a house that had a green dining room, brown living room with orange accent wall, one teal bedroom, one blue and pink bedroom, yellow kitchen and slate-colored bath, all in ≤ 700 sf, and we lost in the bidding war, competing against five other would-be buyers.

The house had obviously been maintained with much love over many years and there were more than enough people able to see that for the house to sell in a week.

So it depends.

@writersblock: The location must have been terrific too :)

Yea, if you have to refresh the paint anyway, just pick an unobjectionable neutral that complements the house overall; someone above mentioned cohesiveness, and agree that's key.

Re: "Colorful" homes. Yes, I would think this is true in a lot of instances, but in my experience as a seller, it didn't matter. At my last house, I had a passable kitchen - cheapo cabinets, white tile floor, but it was clean and functional, couldn't afford to remodel. A few years before we sold, we had to do some drywall repair because the roof leaked, so perfect time to paint. I had my heart set on an a bright apple-green kitchen. Super-crisp white trim/moulding. I *loved* it! Had a plum-colored living room to boot, and a navy guest bathroom. I wasn't about to spend a few grand to get these rooms repainted to sell. Guess what? Feedback was great - buyers loved the bright cheerful kitchen, made comments about how clean the house was, and I got two offers the first weekend, both above asking price! Of course, this is anecdotal, I don't know one way or the other whether homes that are not all neutral in tone sell more quickly or command more money; I tend to think it's more about cleanliness, clutterlessness, and a sense that the home has been care for rather than paint or carpet color.

As an aside I hate yellow paint - *hate it*, it gets on my last nerve, I don't care what shade it is. Doesn't it figure that the first house I bid on (full asking price, no less), had soft yellow through the whole house, and the house I actually ended up purchasing has butt-ugly yellow-white walls with a contrasting baby blue kitchen wall {gag}. Who cares? I'm saving my pennies to get the whole house repainted anyway, paint really is the last thing I care about when purchasing a house.

Re grey: The wrong shade or the right shade in the wrong light can make the house feel really depressing - especially up where I am where a good portion of the winter months are cloudy and drab. Personally, I would go for warmer-toned neutrals, or a greige which leaned warmer than cooler.

Listen to Denita, I think she says it perfectly. As a 4x homebuyer I don’t want to first have to re-paint entire house. I want it to be a nice, clean neutral color (agree not grey). Off white is perfect. Look online at the plethora of model homes. They are all neutral. They are also very inviting.

Agree with either SW Accessible Beige or the BM equivalent Manchester Tan.

There are many young families here that loose bidding war after bidding war, because the supply of housing in their buying range is limited. I bet after a year of this, paint colors won't bother them. Getting, finally, a house they can afford and that they like for whatever it does have, will make them happy enough.

It is very often location, aha-and circumstances, of different people in this location.

We bought our 1943 3b/2ba house 3 years ago, and it is also "a comfortable house but nothing fancy." No particular curb appeal, but it's in a super location 2 blocks off the main drag, within walking distance of major grocery, wine shop, library, post office, restaurants, and regional medical campus. Very quiet, no thru traffic, only residents and their visitors. But it sat on the market at a very reasonable price point for over a year before we bought it. All the public rooms and bedrooms were painted gray and the floors were stained walnut. Even with the large windows, the place felt like a cave! I have nothing against gray paint per se, but it was totally wrong for this house. Before we moved in the gray was painted over with a blah neutral we could live with for a while (SW Antique White) and the floors were refinished down to bare wood, no stain, just polyurethane. What a difference! I love to see paint colors used that add warmth and welcome to home interiors, but I have to live in the house for a while to get a feel for how the light changes during the day and each room's particular character. A light neutral paint throughout is often a seller's friend.