Painting your home is one of the best ROI (return on investment) upgrades you can make when preparing your home for sale. Even so, freshening up the interior living spaces—including the kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms—with colors that are in style can increase the volume and quality of your offers. However, like fashion, not all paint colors are in season. The wrong paint color for your home can have a negative effect!
Popular Exterior Colors For Your Home
Zillow’s 2017 Paint Color Analysis examined the relationship between paint color combinations (room type, exterior vs interior, etc) and final sale price. Zillow gathered data from more than 32,000 listing photos for homes sold between 2010 and 2017. The analysis used homes with white walls as a benchmark and controlled for square footage, the age of the home, days on market, the specific market, and the date of the transaction.
Even if you’re going the FSBO route, find out what color house sells the fastest, then you can ask for refers from real estate brokers and agents for an expert home painter.
According to the study, homes with exteriors painted in shades of blue or light grey sold for $3,496 more than similar homes painted brown or taupe. Homes with a front door painted navy blue, dark gray, or charcoal sold for $1,500 more than similar homes with other colored doors. In total, this color combination could equal a $5,000 increase in value!
Popular Interior Colors For Your Home
The color study also examined how colors impact different living spaces. Homes with bathrooms painted light powder blue to periwinkle sold for $5,400 more than the control. Homes with bedrooms painted light cerulean to cadet blue had a smaller impact with a $1,900 increase.
Both kitchens and dining rooms benefited from blues as well. However, dining rooms painted a darker hue of blue, such as a slate blue, boosted home values by $1,900, whereas kitchens followed similar bathroom and bedroom hues. Contrary to the blue-hued theme, living rooms got a $1,900 bump in value when painted oatmeal.
Home Colors To Avoid
Like fashion, what’s in style for home remodeling and decorating changes. Not only do buyers have their own personal tastes, but home color popularity depends on the market, too. Despite these factors, Zillow’s study was able to extract what colors to avoid painting your home.
Tour open houses in your market from a variety of brokers to gauge what’s in style. You’ll get a better understanding of how different colors affect the presentation of each living space.
Homes painted medium brown or taupe sold for an average of $2,000 less than homes painted white. Bathrooms that were painted egg-shell or off-white and bedrooms painted light pink also had a negative combined impact on buyers valued at $4,100! Dining rooms painted brick red or terracotta sold for $2,000 less than their white-painted benchmark. Lastly, kitchens painted straw yellow and living rooms painted pastel grey had an equal, albeit minimal, $800 impact.
How Are Paint Trends Determined?
Surprisingly, there are a handful of color experts who are secretly responsible for influencing color popularity. The Pantone Color Institute selects an annual “Color of the Year,” which has profound impacts across several industries, most notably real estate. Their 2018 is called “Ultra Violet” and will usher in a handful of complimentary colors.
Why certain colors trend over others is a not entirely a mystery either: A mixture of psychology and market trends drive home color popularity. According to Zillow’s Chief Economist Svenja Gudell, “painting walls in fresh, natural-looking colors, particularly in shades of blue and pale gray not only make a home feel larger, but also are neutral enough to help future buyers envision themselves living in the space.”
Light blue colors in kitchens and bathrooms compliment other trends in home decoration. For example, white countertops and cabinets are currently in style and light blues play well with this color combination. In addition, homes painted with brown exteriors or with red dining rooms also feel dated to buyers. For these reasons, selecting the right paint color is one of the best ROI changes you can make. For 2018, you can still follow Zillow’s findings while incorporating Ultra Violet where you feel playful.
