Choosing a paint colour for a north facing sitting room can cause quite the conundrum. Our ability to manipulate daylight is limited by two things: which direction your house faces and how you choose to decorate it. The first is tricky to control but the second presents myriad options: and luckily there are several ways to warm up north facing rooms using decoration alone. First, consider how each room in your house will be used. As designer and founder of Home & Found, Tamsin Saunders suggests: ‘Think about when you are going to be using each room. I’d rather have a smaller west or east facing bedroom or kitchen than a north facing one but I am very happy to cosy up at the end of the day in a north facing snug or sitting room,’ she says.
There is also the matter of texture: the perennially popular tool for introducing a sense of warmth to a space. ’Gentle warmth and cosiness can be achieved not just through paint choice but fabrics and art,’ says Tamsin, so you may want to refer to our helpful guide on texture. Lighting is another key topic, and in rooms with less natural light it is crucial to get it right. Most designers agree that spotlights are a quick way to remove any sense of atmosphere or depth from a space, but directional light and light at different levels – i.e. a melange of table lamps, wall lights and pendant lights – will help to invoke a comforting feel in the room.
Above all else, the colour of your room matters. What colour you paint it will be the difference between a cosy space and a cold one, so we canvassed the designers and paint experts in the know on what are the best colours to paint a north facing sitting room. ‘North-facing rooms are subject to three colour theories: firstly, choose warmer shades to compensate for the cooler quality of natural light; secondly, embrace deeper shades to create a cosier ambience, and thirdly, avoid using a bright white, even on the ceiling,’ says Andy Greenall, Head of Design Paint & Paper Library. With this sage advice in mind, we have compiled all of the best colours to paint north facing sitting rooms. Here’s what we found out:
Paint colours for north facing sitting rooms
Chocolate tones and rich browns
‘I panelled the walls in our north facing sitting room and painted them a glossy rich dark chocolate brown to blur the edges of the walls, and bounce the light off,’ says Tamsin, referring not just to the minimal daylight but fire and lamp light too. Given that shades of brown are the colour du jour, there is no shortage of paints to choose from. From the Little Greene palette, Ruth suggests the bold, enveloping depth of ‘Chocolate’, while House & Garden's former Style Director, Gabby Deeming's go-to brown shade is ‘Caddie’ by Paint & Paper Library, which she has used to warm up the sitting room walls of both her flat in Bloomsbury and her house in Devon.
Interior designer Natasha Quick maintains that it is best to ‘embrace the darkness of a north facing room’ with these dark colours, citing browns with warm undertones like ‘Cinnamon’ or ‘Chocolate’ from Edward Bulmer. ‘These colours, with the added layers and textures of a room such as linens bronzes, mirrors and lamps, can make it really special,’ she says.
Reds, pinks and oranges
‘A powder pink shade, though often reserved for bedrooms, can create a warm, characterful feel,’ says Ruth Mottershead, Creative Director Little Greene. ‘Soft plaster like pinks are an inviting, charming colour to use in sitting rooms, they provide a warm, elegant atmosphere that’s perfect for relaxing or entertaining. ‘Masquerade’ gives warmth to a living space whilst remaining light and airy, making us feel uplifted and calm.’ We’re unlikely to tire of earthy red tones, either, which interior designer Natasha Quick says ‘work beautifully too in a north facing room’. Her favourites are ‘Henna’ from Beata Heuman's new range with Mylands, or ‘Red Earth’ by Farrow and Ball.
For interior designer Lucinda Griffith, north facing sitting rooms are best treated with rich colours, and two of the best ‘families’ are oranges and soft terracottas (‘“Fowler Pink” by Farrow & Ball is great,‘ she says). I would always add in some stronger tones with the curtains and upholstery to make the scheme richer, such as a wonderful cola colour. Lucinda adds that she prefers a darker floor in a north facing room. ‘Essentially, avoid the bright whites and cooler tones as you will just create a space that feels refrigerated!’
Warm neutrals
‘For a relaxed sitting room, where you might not want the paint colour to dominate the scheme, choose neutrals with an ochre or red oxide pigment, these have either a yellow undertone (but a warm yellow rather than an acidic one), or a pink undertone (but a rustier, warmer pink rather than a magenta one, the latter will feel quite grey and cold),’ says Andy, who recommends Paint & Paper Library’s architectural families Stone, Canvas, Powder and Leather, which ‘will help create a welcoming ambience in north facing rooms’. He also suggests avoiding Marble, Salt, Porcelain or Lead, which will feel ‘distinctly more blue and therefore cooler.’
To avoid the aforementioned, bright white ceiling, which Andy maintains will have a ‘cooling effect’, opt for the varying strengths within each of these families – for example Leather V on walls and Leather I on the ceiling. ‘This gives you a jeopardy-free, harmonious scheme that provides a perfect backdrop to other key ingredients for a calm, inviting space,’ he says. Other paint companies provide a similar variety of shade within a colour – Edward Bulmer’s natural paints can be bought at different percentages of strength, allowing you to create a gradient of the same tone.
Ruth points out that the undertone of a paint will hugely influence how it interacts with light (or lack thereof). ‘To counteract the lack of yellow light in north facing rooms, you can inject warmth using harmonious light neutrals with a warm base tone such as “Travertine” or “Stock Deep” with “Stock”,’ she says, the latter of which has been used to great effect in the above bedroom by Rachel Aisling Walker in a north London family home.
A favourite neutral among the House & Garden team is Farrow & Ball’s ‘Dimity’, whose yellow-pink undertones make it a transformative colour which is warm and comforting against the soft glow of evening lighting but offers a barely-there blush during the day. ‘Dimity holds onto its gentle warmth but maintains a lighter, more airy feel,’ says colour consultant Harriet Slaughter, adding that it is ‘wonderful paired with muddy soft pinkish-browns, such as Atelier Ellis' “Warm Mud Brown” or “Ghost”’.
