Best Paint Colors to Increase Home Value – Lawrence, KS

What paint colors can help increase home value in 2026?

QUICK ANSWER: Current 2026 buyer-response research suggests that paint color can influence how buyers react to a home and how much they say they would be willing to offer. Zillow’s latest study found pale blue performed best in living rooms, charcoal gray in kitchens, chocolate brown in bedrooms, and sage green in bathrooms. Sage green was the only color that ranked in the top tier across every room studied. These findings are useful when preparing a home for sale, but they do not guarantee a higher appraisal or sale price. The best resale color still needs to work with the room’s light, flooring, cabinets, trim, and other fixed finishes.

If you are repainting before putting a house on the market, choosing the safest possible white is no longer the only strategy worth considering.

Buyer preferences have changed.

Zillow’s 2026 Paint Color Analysis found that buyers responded strongly to several colors with more depth and personality than the all-white interiors sellers have traditionally been told to use.

But there is an important distinction that gets lost in many articles about “paint colors that increase home value.”

A paint color does not automatically add a certain number of dollars to the value of your house.

The research measures buyer response.

That makes the findings useful, but they need to be used correctly.

What “Increase Home Value” Really Means

When you see headlines claiming that a bedroom color could add thousands of dollars to a home’s value, it is easy to read that as a guaranteed increase in appraisal or sale price.

That is not what Zillow measured.

For its 2026 Paint Color Analysis, Zillow’s behavioral science team surveyed more than 4,400 recent and prospective home buyers across the United States. Participants were shown images of rooms painted in different colors and asked about their interest in the home, likelihood of touring it, and how much they would be willing to offer.

The resulting dollar figures are estimates of buyer willingness to offer compared with the same room painted white.

They are not guarantees.

Painting a bedroom chocolate brown does not automatically increase an appraisal by $2,277.

A pale blue living room does not guarantee an extra $1,723 at closing.

The real value of the research is that it gives sellers evidence about which colors currently create stronger buyer responses.

That is much more useful than simply following a design trend because it happens to be popular on social media.

The Best Paint Colors for Selling a House in 2026

The strongest finding in Zillow’s current research is that buyers are not responding to one universal “best” paint color.

The winning color changes by room.

Living Room: Pale Blue

Pale blue was the strongest performer in the living room.

Zillow used Sherwin-Williams Tradewind as the featured example. Buyers shown a pale blue living room indicated offers approximately $1,723 higher than buyers shown a white living room.

Charcoal gray also performed strongly, followed by sage green.

That does not mean every living room should suddenly be painted blue.

A room with warm flooring, strong wood tones, colorful furniture, or limited daylight may react very differently to a particular blue.

The useful lesson is that buyers appear willing to accept—and sometimes prefer—more personality in a living room than the traditional all-white resale formula suggests.

Kitchen: Charcoal Gray

Charcoal gray was the strongest kitchen performer in Zillow’s 2026 study.

Sherwin-Williams Peppercorn was the featured example. Buyers associated that darker kitchen color with offers roughly $1,373 above the white comparison.

Dark plum also performed well.

This is a significant change from the old assumption that every resale kitchen must be bright white or pale gray.

It is also a good example of why sellers should not blindly apply national data.

A charcoal wall color in a kitchen with light cabinets and appropriate lighting may create depth.

The same color combined with dark cabinets, dark countertops, limited daylight, and a small floor plan could produce a very different result.

The room has to be considered as a whole.

Bedroom: Chocolate Brown

The biggest estimated offer difference in Zillow’s 2026 study came from the bedroom.

Warm chocolate brown was the strongest performer, with buyers indicating offers approximately $2,277 higher than for the white-bedroom comparison.

Sherwin-Williams Turkish Coffee was used as the featured shade.

Sage green and pale blue also performed well in bedrooms.

This does not mean sellers should automatically paint every bedroom dark brown.

Bedrooms vary tremendously in size, natural light, flooring, furniture, and architectural character.

The more useful takeaway is that buyers currently appear receptive to bedrooms that feel warm, grounded, and intentional rather than automatically white or pale beige.

Bathroom: Sage Green

Sage green performed best in the bathroom for buyer interest and tour intention.

Unlike some of the other room winners, Zillow did not associate the top bathroom sage with a specific offer-price premium.

That distinction matters.

A color can improve buyer response without producing a measurable dollar figure in the study.

Sage also performed well beyond the bathroom.

In fact, it was the only color to rank in the top tier in every room Zillow studied.

That makes sage green one of the more flexible choices for sellers who want color without jumping to a stronger room-specific statement such as chocolate brown or charcoal.

Quick 2026 Room-by-Room Reference

Living Room

Top performer: Pale blue

Other strong choices: Charcoal gray and sage green

Main consideration: Make sure the blue works with flooring, trim, upholstery, and the actual natural light in the room.

Kitchen

Top performer: Charcoal gray

Another strong choice: Dark plum

Main consideration: Evaluate cabinets, countertops, backsplash, flooring, and room brightness before adding another dark element.

Bedroom

Top performer: Chocolate brown

Other strong choices: Sage green and pale blue

Main consideration: A deeper color needs enough support from lighting, trim, bedding, flooring, and room size to feel intentional rather than heavy.

Bathroom

Top performer: Sage green

Other choices that performed well for buyer interest: White and charcoal gray

Main consideration: Bathrooms contain fixed finishes—tile, counters, flooring, cabinets, and fixtures—that can strongly affect how a wall color reads.

Sage Green May Be the Safest All-Around 2026 Choice

If there is one color family that deserves special attention from sellers this year, it is sage green.

Not because sage won every individual room.

It did not.

Its strength is consistency.

Zillow found sage green was the only color to land in the top tier across every room tested.

That makes it useful for a homeowner who wants something more distinctive than white without committing to a very room-specific dark color.

It can also work with many common fixed finishes, including wood tones, white trim, stone, and several neutral flooring colors.

Still, “sage green” describes a family of colors, not one interchangeable shade.

Some sages lean gray.

Others lean warmer or more olive.

One may look muted in your house while another suddenly appears much greener once it is surrounded by your floors, cabinets, furnishings, and daylight.

The actual sample matters.

Colors That Performed Poorly in Zillow’s 2026 Study

Understanding the weaker performers can be just as useful as knowing the winners.

Zillow found three colors repeatedly near the bottom across the rooms studied:

- ochre yellow

- bold red

- pale or blush pink

Ochre yellow was the most consistent underperformer.

A bold red bathroom also produced the largest negative room-specific offer difference in the study, while pale pink performed poorly in multiple rooms.

Those numbers should not be interpreted as a guarantee that a red bathroom will reduce a particular Lawrence home’s selling price by a specific amount.

They indicate that, among the buyers Zillow surveyed, those colors created a less favorable response than the white comparison.

If you love one of these colors and plan to stay in your home, resale research does not need to dictate your decorating choices.

If you are preparing to list soon, the calculation changes.

The question becomes less about personal preference and more about how many buyers are likely to respond positively to the room.

Why the Best Colors Changed From 2025 to 2026

This is one reason sellers should be cautious about old “best paint color” lists.

The winners changed.

Zillow’s 2025 research gave particularly strong results to colors such as navy blue in bedrooms and olive green in kitchens.

The 2026 analysis shifted toward:

- pale blue living rooms

- charcoal kitchens

- chocolate brown bedrooms

- sage bathrooms

That does not mean the 2025 advice was wrong.

It means buyer preferences change.

The mistake would be treating any annual research study as a permanent rule.

A homeowner planning to sell several years from now should not repaint the entire house today based solely on what buyers preferred in 2026.

A homeowner listing in the near future can use current research as one factor in a broader decision.

Should You Repaint Before Selling?

Not every room needs repainting just because a house is going on the market.

A useful way to decide is to separate rooms into three groups.

Repaint

Repainting deserves serious consideration when walls are:

- heavily scuffed

- stained

- patched in obvious places

- visibly worn

- painted in a highly personalized color that dominates the room

- inconsistent with adjoining spaces

- making the room appear dated or poorly maintained

The condition of the wall may matter more to buyers than whether the color happens to match this year’s top research result.

Consider Repainting

The walls may be in good condition, but the color could still be working against the sale.

This is where current buyer-response research becomes more useful.

A room painted in a very strong personal color may be technically fine yet make listing photos harder for some buyers to relate to.

A new color could make sense if the home is being prepared specifically for resale.

Leave It Alone

A room does not automatically need repainting if it is already:

- clean

- coordinated

- in good condition

- broadly appealing

- compatible with the flooring and fixed finishes

- consistent with the rest of the home

There is little value in creating work simply to chase the latest color study.

The best pre-sale project is often the one that solves an actual presentation problem.

Don’t Choose a Resale Color Without Looking at the Whole Room

Paint does not exist by itself.

Before choosing a color, look at the permanent and semi-permanent elements that will remain when buyers walk through the house.

That may include:

- flooring

- cabinets

- countertops

- backsplash

- tile

- fireplace materials

- trim

- doors

- major furniture that will remain for staging

- adjoining rooms visible from the space

A highly rated resale color can still look wrong if its undertone fights the materials around it.

A charcoal kitchen wall next to cool white cabinets and pale stone may read very differently from the same charcoal surrounded by dark wood cabinetry and brown flooring.

The research tells you what buyers responded to in the study.

The room tells you whether the color belongs there.

Light Can Completely Change the Color You Chose

Paint color is affected by both natural and artificial light.

Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams both advise homeowners to consider room lighting and undertones when evaluating colors.

A color that looks balanced on a sample card can appear warmer, cooler, brighter, grayer, or more saturated once it is on the wall.

Room orientation can also matter.

Northern light can emphasize cooler undertones, while warmer direct light can shift how the same color is perceived.

Artificial lighting changes the result again after sunset.

That is especially important when working with subtle colors such as sage, pale blue, greige, warm white, or charcoal.

Small undertone differences can become much more obvious once the color covers an entire wall.

Test the Color Before Painting the Whole Room

Do not choose a resale color from a phone screen or a small printed chip alone.

Benjamin Moore recommends evaluating larger samples in the actual room and moving samples to different walls so you can see the color under different lighting.

That is good advice whether you are selling or staying.

Look at the sample:

- in the morning

- during brighter daytime light

- later in the afternoon

- under the artificial lighting used at night

Also move it around the room.

The wall beside a window may make the color look different from an interior wall across the room.

A larger sample gives you a much better preview than a tiny chip held under store lighting.

Open-Concept Homes Need Color Flow, Not Independent Room Decisions

Open layouts create another problem with room-by-room research.

Zillow may identify one color for a living room and another for a kitchen, but that does not mean those colors belong next to each other in every open floor plan.

If the living room, dining area, and kitchen are visible at the same time, treat them as a connected visual space.

You may decide to:

- use one compatible color throughout

- use related tones with similar undertones

- keep one main wall color and introduce stronger color through a more contained room or architectural feature

The goal is not to squeeze every research-winning color into one house.

It is to use the research intelligently.

Lawrence Homeowners Should Treat National Data as a Starting Point

Zillow’s research is national.

It is not a Lawrence-specific buyer study.

That means it can tell a Lawrence homeowner what thousands of recent and prospective buyers across the country responded to, but it cannot tell you with certainty what buyers in your particular neighborhood will prefer when your home is listed.

Zillow itself recommends that sellers consult a local real estate professional before making resale decisions based on paint-color trends.

That is sensible.

A local agent can consider the actual market, likely buyer pool, competing listings, price range, architecture, and neighborhood.

The painting decision then becomes:

What does the current national research suggest?

combined with:

What makes sense for this particular house and its likely buyers?

That is a more responsible approach than treating a national color study as a rule.

Print Out This Valuable Checklist

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Pre-Sale Interior Paint Color Checklist

Use this checklist before deciding which rooms actually need repainting.

Start With the Sale

☐ I know whether I am repainting primarily for resale or for my own long-term use.

☐ I have a general idea of when the home may be listed.

☐ I understand that national color research is guidance, not a guaranteed increase in appraisal or sale price.

☐ I have considered asking my real estate agent which rooms or colors may affect buyer appeal in my local market.

Inspect the Existing Paint

☐ I checked for scuffs, stains, obvious patches, and wall damage.

☐ I identified rooms where the current color is highly personalized.

☐ I identified rooms where the existing color still looks clean, coordinated, and broadly appealing.

☐ I am not repainting a good-looking room simply because a trend report named a different color.

Check the Fixed Finishes

☐ I compared the proposed wall color with the flooring.

☐ I checked it against cabinets and countertops.

☐ I checked tile, backsplash, fireplace materials, and other permanent finishes.

☐ I compared the color with existing trim and doors.

☐ I considered how the room connects visually with adjoining spaces.

Check the Light

☐ I looked at the color in the actual room instead of relying on a phone or computer screen.

☐ I tested a sufficiently large sample.

☐ I viewed the sample on more than one wall.

☐ I checked it in morning light.

☐ I checked it during the brightest part of the day.

☐ I checked it in the evening under artificial lighting.

☐ I paid attention to unexpected warm, cool, green, blue, pink, yellow, or gray undertones.

Use the 2026 Research Carefully

☐ I know pale blue performed strongly in living rooms.

☐ I know charcoal gray performed strongly in kitchens.

☐ I know chocolate brown performed strongly in bedrooms.

☐ I know sage green performed strongly in bathrooms and ranked in the top tier across every room Zillow studied.

☐ I understand that the winning study color is not automatically the right choice for my specific room.

Decide Room by Room

☐ REPAINT: The room is worn, damaged, highly personalized, or clearly hurting presentation.

☐ CONSIDER REPAINTING: The room is in good condition, but a different color may broaden buyer appeal.

☐ LEAVE IT ALONE: The room is clean, coordinated, current enough, and does not present an obvious resale problem.

My Notes

Rooms that clearly need repainting:

Rooms I am considering repainting:

Rooms that can probably stay as they are:

Colors I want to sample:

Questions for my real estate agent:

Questions before the painting project begins:

Frequently Asked Questions

What Paint Color Adds the Most Home Value in 2026?

There is no single color that performed best in every room.

Zillow’s 2026 analysis found the largest estimated room-specific offer premium for a chocolate brown bedroom. Pale blue led the living room, charcoal gray led the kitchen, and sage green led the bathroom.

Sage green was the only color that ranked in the top tier across every room studied.

Remember that these are buyer-response and willingness-to-offer findings—not guaranteed increases in appraisal or sale price.

What Is the Safest Paint Color for Resale?

There is no universal safest color, but sage green stood out in Zillow’s 2026 research because it performed strongly across every room studied.

A broadly appealing neutral can still be a sensible choice when it works better with the flooring, cabinets, light, and architecture.

The safest choice is often the color that balances current buyer appeal with the actual room.

Is White Still the Best Color for Selling a House?

Not automatically.

White remains versatile, but Zillow’s 2026 study found several room-specific colors that produced stronger buyer responses than white.

That does not make white a bad resale color.

It means sellers no longer need to assume an all-white interior is the only broadly appealing option.

Should Every Room Be Painted the Same Color Before Selling?

No.

Consistency matters, especially in connected spaces, but every room does not have to be identical.

Room function, lighting, fixed finishes, and sightlines should all influence the decision.

An open floor plan may benefit from more continuity than separate bedrooms and bathrooms.

What Interior Paint Colors Should Sellers Avoid?

In Zillow’s 2026 study, ochre yellow, bold red, and pale pink were among the most consistent underperformers.

That does not mean those colors will reduce the selling price of every home.

It means they produced weaker buyer responses in that particular national study.

Should I Repaint My House Before Listing It?

Repainting may be worth considering when walls are worn, stained, damaged, heavily personalized, or creating a dated or inconsistent appearance.

If the existing walls are clean, coordinated, and broadly appealing, repainting every room may not be necessary.

Does Paint Color Actually Increase Appraisal Value?

The Zillow research discussed here did not measure appraisal values.

It measured buyer interest, tour intentions, and how much participants said they would be willing to offer after viewing rooms painted in different colors.

A paint color should therefore not be treated as a guaranteed appraisal increase.

Should I Ask My Real Estate Agent Before Choosing a Resale Color?

That can be useful.

National research gives you broad buyer-response information, while a local real estate professional can consider the buyer pool, competing listings, neighborhood, home style, and current market where the property will actually be sold.

Use the Research Without Letting the Research Choose the Room

And if the room already looks good, do not create a painting project just to follow a trend.

If you’re also choosing colors for the outside of your home, our guide on how to choose exterior paint colors explains how to coordinate the roof, brick, stone, trim, sunlight, and architectural style before deciding.

The most useful lesson from the 2026 paint-color data is not that every seller should rush out and buy pale blue, charcoal gray, chocolate brown, and sage green.

It is that buyer preferences are more nuanced than the old “paint everything white” rule suggests.

Current research can give you a strong starting point.

Then look at the house.

Consider the flooring, cabinets, countertops, trim, light, adjoining rooms, wall condition, and how soon the property will be listed.

Sample the color before committing.