What Color Should You Paint With When Selling Your Home?
Perhaps The Rolling Stones were just giving important decorating advice when they sang “Paint it Black.” Zillow.com, the real estate website, released their findings from analyzing more than 135,000 photos from houses that sold between 2010 and 2018. They analyzed what different paint colors did to the value of the home compared to the national average home value. At the top of the list of how to increase your home’s value is painting the front door black or with a charcoal gray color. This increased the value by $6,271!
Your front door is typically one of the first things that a prospective buyer will see when they come to look at your house so having a freshly painted door is a great way to make a first impression. Choosing black or dark gray will help it pop and provide a great contrast especially if the main color of your house is not too dark. When you consider that getting your front door professionally painted is not very expensive, this is a great return on investment.
Other ways to increase your home’s value with paint colors include painting the kitchen cabinets. You are probably not surprised to hear this if you watch HGTV or follow anything design related on Pinterest or Instagram. Painting kitchen cabinets is extremely popular right now and no one paints more kitchen cabinets in Cleveland than we do. You may be surprised that Zillow found that “Tuxedo Kitchens” or those with white on the top and a dark gray, black or blue on the bottom increased a home’s value by $1,547.
In 2017, Zillow’s similar study found that painting your bathroom a pale blue color would increase the price of your home by $5,400 while in the 2018 study this color in the bathroom only increased the value by $2,786, which may indicate that this light blue/gray color is waining in popularity. Medium to Dark Brown and Red are definitely colors to avoid. In the study, Zillow found that brown in the dining room decreased the value of a home on average by $1,684 and red in a kitchen lowered the value by $2,310.
So what is the worst paint color choice you can make if your goal is to sell your home for us much as possible? Painting the exterior yellow. According to the study, shades of yellow on the exterior decreased the home’s value by $3,408. Our experience has shown that dark navy and gray are still extremely popular for exterior colors but the Zillow study does not mention either for exterior.
To offer a brief summary of the findings, warm shades like yellow, brown and red are not currently very popular and may decrease the value of your home. Cooler shades like gray and blue are still popular as they have been for years but the trend is going toward even darker shades. Painted kitchen cabinets are still also very sought after, especially with a two tone “tuxedo” look with white on the top and a dark shade on the bottom. If you are curious as to the most popular colors for kitchen cabinets, check out this article we wrote recently.
One of the easiest ways to increase your home’s value is with a professional paint job and our team makes the entire process easy. We even offer a complimentary color consultation with our Interior Designer to help make sure you pick the best color for your home.
