Living room colours: warm enough to live in all day, good enough that friends ask

Start your living room colour with the light, not with Pinterest

Most of the beautiful living rooms on social media are photographed in light that's nothing like ours. Living rooms in Bangkok tend to get strong afternoon sun from the west, or almost no light at all because they face the building next door. Then in the evening, a different kind of light goes on. The same colour changes all day long.

In a room with little light, choose soft warm tones like Linen or Oatmeal to make it look brighter and gentler. In a room that gets a lot of afternoon sun, choose a tone with a touch of green or grey, like Tea Leaf, so the room doesn't feel hot on the eyes.

Colour on a screen never matches colour on a wall, so always try a sample pot on a real wall first.

Which living room tones suit which kind of home

The living room is the room you use for the longest each day, so a good colour has to be one you can live with all day without tiring of it.

• Warm beige: Linen, Sand Dust, Coconut Sugar. They go with fabric sofas and wood of every tone, and look expensive without trying.
• Fresh, like a house in a garden: Tea Leaf and Pine Forest. They go with houseplants and rattan.
• Rich and warm, like a café: Caramel or Thai Tea. Best in a room with good light where you want some character.
• Deep, like a library: Deep Sea on one wall, with dark wood and leather.

The wall behind the sofa and the TV wall, where colour can do its work

If you want to play with colour in the living room, one wall is enough. The wall behind the sofa is the one guests see first; the TV wall is the one you look at longest. A TV wall should be a mid to dark colour that doesn't reflect light, so the screen doesn't look like a black box floating on a white wall.

A textured feature wall is the choice that changes a room the most. Voqe Mineral Finish has a matt surface with hand-applied brush marks, so no two walls are alike. The shades that suit a living room are Chill Beige, Latte and Charoenkrung Plaster. Wash the wall with light in the evening and it suddenly gains depth.

For the remaining walls, use Voqe Wall Paint in Eggshell in a lighter tone. The room will read as one continuous story.

An open-plan living room with a kitchen: how to make the colour tell one story

In most condos and townhouses today, the living room, dining table and kitchen share one space. Paint each a different colour and the room looks as if it was cut and pasted from three different homes. The simplest way is to use one main colour across the whole space, then mark out zones with one feature wall, or with a shade one step darker from the same family. For example, Oatmeal throughout and Coconut Sugar in the dining corner.

If the kitchen has old tiles you don't like, there's no need to rip them out. Voqe Tile Finish coats over existing tiles, and you can choose a shade to go with your living room walls.

Try your living room colour first, then start painting

Order two or three 100ml sample pots at ฿75 each and paint large patches on a real wall. Look at them in the morning, in the afternoon and with the lights on in the evening, then sit on the sofa and look again, because that's the angle you'll see this room from most.

Voqe Wall Paint covers 35–40 sq m per gallon per coat. A medium living room usually takes 1–2 gallons for two coats. Use the paint calculator on our website for a more exact figure. If you'd like help choosing, send a photo of your room on LINE @dynohomes, or come and see the shade walls at Voqe Studio (Bang Phli).