Cool-tone bedroom colours: 6 shades that make a room calm without feeling cold

What cool-toned bedroom colours are, and why they suit a hot-climate home

Think of a swimming pool at two in the afternoon, fresh banana leaves, or the sky after rain. These are cool tones, on the blue, green and purple side of the colour wheel. Cool tones don't actually lower the temperature in a room, but they make it feel cooler to the eye and more relaxing. For a bedroom in a city that is hot almost all year, that feeling is worth a lot.

Cool tones also seem to recede from the eye, so the walls look slightly further away. That's why a small condo bedroom painted pale blue or a light grey-green often feels airier than one painted in deep warm colours.

Another group people often forget is cool greys. A grey with a hint of blue or green looks clean and modern, and makes a good backdrop for white bedding and honey-coloured wood.

• Blue: calm and airy, like the morning sky
• Green: shady and natural, at home with plants
• Soft purple: soft, dreamy and distinctive
• Blue-grey or green-grey: understated, modern, not sweet

6 cool-toned bedroom shades: pick the one that suits the room's character

Each shade has a different personality, like slow songs that can be jazz or folk. Choose by the mood you want when the lights go out, not by the prettiest picture on the internet.

If you're still unsure, sage green and grey-green are the safest places to start, because they have a little hidden warmth and go with wood of any colour. Navy is the shade for people who already know they love a room that wraps around them.

• Pale blue: suits small rooms, and people who want to wake up to something bright
• Sage green: a greyish green, the easiest to live with in the group, goes with wood of any colour
• Grey-green: still, like tea leaves, for people who like minimal but don't want all-white
• Cool grey: clean and modern, needs warm-toned fabrics and wood alongside it
• Lavender: a soft greyish purple, gentle with personality, beautiful in rooms with morning light
• Navy: deep and enveloping, suits a headboard wall or a room used mainly at night

The direction of the light changes cool colours more than you think

The same colour in a north-facing room and a west-facing room looks like two different colours. In our homes, a room with north-facing windows gets soft, even light that is rather cool, so a cool colour there may look greyer and duller than it did in the pot. A west-facing room gets hot, fierce afternoon sun, and a cool colour helps bring the feeling back to comfortable.

East-facing rooms get gentle morning sun, which suits pale blue and lavender. And a room with almost no daylight, used only with the lights on at night, is actually where a dark colour like navy works well, because there's no point fighting the dark. Embrace it instead.

• North-facing rooms: choose a cool tone with a little warmth, such as sage green or grey-green
• West-facing rooms: pale blue or cool grey helps take the heat out of the afternoon sun
• East-facing rooms: clear blue and lavender look bright and beautiful in the morning
• Rooms with little light: navy or dark green, then add warm lights in several places

Pair cool bedroom colours with wood and fabric so the room doesn't feel cold

When a cool-toned bedroom looks like a clinic, it's usually not the wall colour that's wrong. It's that everything around it has gone cool too: blue walls, grey bedding, harsh white lights. So the room feels cold to the eye and to the heart.

The fix is to bring in warmth as a counterpoint: honey-toned oak or teak, cream or oatmeal linen, rattan or woven mats, and small touches of brass like a handle or a lamp base. It's like iced green tea with buttered toast; each makes the other taste better.

Lighting matters just as much. Warm white bulbs at around 2700–3000K make blue or green walls look soft at night. Very white bulbs make cool colours look harder and colder than you intended.

• Warm-toned wood: headboard, bedside table, curtain rail
• Cream, beige or oatmeal fabrics: bedding, curtains, rugs
• Natural materials: rattan, terracotta, woven mats
• Warm metals: small pieces in brass or copper
• Warm bulbs at 2700–3000K

Navy and deep cool bedrooms, for the brave

A dark bedroom is the home's favourite jacket: put it on and you feel held. Navy, deep-sea blue or dark pine green make the corners of the walls fade away at night, so the room feels still and quiet. It suits people who struggle to sleep, or people who use the bedroom just for sleeping, not for working.

If you're not brave enough for the whole room yet, start with the headboard wall alone and leave the ceiling soft white so the room still feels tall and airy. Or, if you want depth with texture, a textured wall in a deep grey-blue feels like an old stone wall under moonlight.

• A dark headboard wall, with the other walls in a lighter colour from the same family
• A soft white ceiling, so the room doesn't feel low
• White or cream bedding, for a clean contrast with the walls
• Wall lights or bedside table lamps instead of a single ceiling light

Mistakes that ruin a cool-toned bedroom, and how to test before you paint

Cool colours change their look more than any others when they leave the pot and go on the wall. A blue that looks soft in the shop can turn into a bright swimming-pool blue in a room that gets lots of sun. The only sure way is to paint a large sample on at least two of your actual walls and look at it for two or three days.

If you want to compare several shades at once, Voqe has sample pots in every shade. Try blue, green and grey side by side in the real room, and you'll see straight away which colour suits your room.

• Choosing a blue that's too bright makes the room look like a child's room or a swimming pool
• Using cool tones for everything, with no wood or warm fabric to break it up
• Painting a small room dark on all four walls and the ceiling without testing first
• Using very white bulbs, which make the colour look hard at night
• Only looking at the colour in the shop, not in your own room's light