This Surprising Color Swap Can Help Your House Sell for More
First impressions are everything in real estate, and one of the most obvious routes to spiff up your rooms is a fresh coat of paint. But what’s the best color to paint those rooms? Do you go with the perennially classic crisp, all-white look, or do you appeal to what’s trending on social media with the hottest “It” hue?
In contrast to all recent forecasts that have predicted a rainbow renaissance for home interiors, a new report from the real estate website Zillow affirms that homebuyers are interested in a moody-yet-neutral palette. In fact, the study released today confirms that rooms painted dark gray can help sell your home for more, to the tune of $2,512. Homes with charcoal rooms, regardless of the space (Zillow looked at living rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and bedrooms), brought higher offers, surpassing neutral juggernauts like greige and—yes—even white.
“Buyers have been exposed to dark gray spaces through home improvement TV shows and their social media feeds, but they’re likely drawn to charcoal on a psychological level,” color psychologist and interior designer Mehnaz Khan noted in the report. “Gray is the color of retreat. As we come out of the pandemic and return to our hectic lives, buyers want home to be a refuge. They want to withdraw and escape from the uncertainty of the outside world, and rooms enveloped in dark gray can create that feeling of security.”
Dark gray living rooms, for example, could command $1,755 more than their neutral counterparts, while gray kitchens, painted in graphite or paler pewter shades, could bring in about $2,500 more. In fact, the study—which surveyed 4,700 recent and prospective homebuyers—showed that a white kitchen could ding your home’s offer price by $600.
The upshot? “Paint is a relatively affordable and easy change, yet it has an outsize impact on a buyer’s perception of the home,” Zillow’s home trends expert Amanda Pendleton said in a release. “Buyers rely on color as a powerful visual signal that a home is modern and up-to-date, or tired and needs maintenance. That first impression contributes to their overall feelings about a home and ultimately, how much they’re willing to pay for it.”
But be sure to hit pause before you give your entire home a gunmetal glow-up: According to Zillow, homes with mid-tone gray front doors, specifically, actually sold for $3,365 less than those without. If you want to move to the dark side on your entry, opt for a black front door instead, the study revealed.
And the outlook wasn’t entirely gray: Earthy tones also performed well in certain spaces, according to the report, including terra-cotta-painted bathrooms, which could give your house a boost of as much as $1,624, and rosy-brown front doors, which could put an additional $300 in your pocket.