How To Add Gray To Your Home Décor

Unsure how to best integrate gray into your home design for maximum aesthetic and practical benefits? Here is an extensive, expert-backed guide on how to add gray to your home decor – both interior and exterior – making your space more attractive and liveable.

Gray is nature-inspired and a timeless hue that can transform your dull, drab home into a modern, tasteful, & uncluttered space. You can easily integrate it into your rugs, furniture, walls, ceiling, window coverings, & reception. Being a neutral shade, it will seamlessly blend into the existing decor with minimal modifications.

Scroll on to learn how to use gray and its combinations with other colors to enhance your home’s current functional and stylistic trends.

4 Tips to Add Pure Gray to Your Home Decor

1. Paint Exterior with Gray – Soft Grace and Sun Protection

Is your home located in a hotter climate zone? Want to preserve the shine of your home’s exterior and add resistance to the enamel against cracking, peeling, and fading? The UV-reflecting properties of gray make it an excellent choice for painting the sun-exposed surfaces of walls, doors, windows, and rooftops.

2. Gray Window Coverings – An All-Decor Choice to Better Repel Solar Heat

Do your windows directly face the sun for 6 to 12 hours a day? Your any-color window blinds & fabric shades will definitely block out the solar heat, but neutral colors will do the job better. They will bounce back more solar radiation, providing superior thermal regulation & energy efficiency.

Safety Precaution

If you plan to install gray colored blinds, shades, or curtains on your windows, make sure to get ones with a cordless option. New US Federal regulations prohibit the sale of the most corded custom window coverings to severe strangulation risks to the children.

3. Gray Against Gray – One of Joanna Gaines’ Favorite Home Decor Choices

Joanna Gaines, a celebrated American interior decorator and founder of the lifestyle brand Magnolia with 13.4M following on Instagram, has been spotted on her TV shows using gray patterned Roman shades, creating a continuous, cohesive look. For a layered designer look and better room darkening & privacy management, she pairs them with beige or ivory curtains.

4. Grayscale Bedroom Interior Design – Create Cozy Comfort to Sleep Better

Gracyscale color scheme is the best option to complement the functionality of a bedroom. Being a neutral color, it will have a less distracting effect on your sleeping routine. Moreover, it will soften the lampshade’s glow to help you sleep deeper and longer, even during the day. If you also mount blinds in grayscale, it will provide softened natural light when you get up late in the morning.

Pros & Cons of Adding Gray to Your Home Decor

Pros

• Centerpiece of Home Decor – Being smart and adaptable, gray can act as an ideal backdrop and a centerpiece of home decor. With its ability to form an outstanding background shade, gray can complement all the brighter colors – from sea blue to fire-engine red – within an arrangement.
• Receptive to diverse color combinations – Being a perfect neutral and extremely versatile color, gray can literally pair well with any other color, from white, silver, and beige to green, blue, yellow, and red. You can style gray alongside other existing colors to suit any style of home.
• Dual, Contrastive Functionality – Gray is a detached and unemotional color, which can dampen or amplify your home’s interior design, depending on how it’s used. When used with a vivid color, like bright red, gray will decrease its saturation, transforming it into dusty rose, and vice versa.
• Total design freedom – Neutral wall paints, carpeting, and window coverings give you the ultimate freedom to change the overall style and look of your room without repainting.
• Increase resale value of your home – Homebuyers mostly prefer neutral tones, like gray, white, and over vibrant, bold, and bright colors, like magenta, orange, blue, and red.
• Create a cohesive look – A gray color palette can create a cohesive, easy-to-maintain look. It also allows you to add pops of color in other areas, like artwork and curtains.
• Promotes peace & balance – Gray toned decor will make your home an ideally balanced and a peaceful space to live in.
• A symbol of intellect and wisdom – As gray is the color of hair in old age, it symbolizes experience, knowledge, maturity, and intelligence.
• A utilitarian color – Gray is an excellent decor-companion for interior designs. It can set mood and stay in the background, enhancing more essential elements, like paintings, windows, & window blinds, and allowing them to stand out.
• A diplomatic color – Being a diplomatic color, gray can effectively negotiate distance between the white and black decor items.

Cons

• A Depressing Color – In color psychology, gray is a depressing hue and has no joy or excitement. It only adds a concrete, depressing feel to a home decor.
• Can Make Your Smaller Look Smaller – Darker shades of gray, like charcoal, gunmetal and onyx grays, will make your space look smaller and tighter.
• A Sterile Effect – While gray is nice and clean, it lacks the warmth of brighter colors, and can make the overall theme of your room lifeless, cold, and sterile.
• Associated with “Gray-area” – As gray color is perceived as emotionally disconnected or distant, it signifies negativity & the state of being indecisive.
• A Suppressive Color – Pure gray is the only color that lacks any direct psychological properties, such as confidence and energy.
• Potential Dullness – Overuse of gray in your home’s interior or exterior decor can lead to dullness, requiring textured elements to maintain warmth.
• May Create Boredom & Sadness – If not paired or balanced with brighter hues, gray will add sadness, dejection, and boredom to your living space.
• Neither Masculine nor Feminine – Gray is too weak to be considered masculine and too menacing to be perceived as feminine, keeping your space utterly neutral.

9 Popular Shades & Accents of Gray to Consider for Your Decor

1. Pure gray – Clear and distinct gray without any undertone, adding a sophisticated edge, refinement, and elegance to any room, from bathroom & laundry room to kitchen & bedroom.
2. Light gray – Enhance natural light and make your space feel larger.
3. Dark gray – Boldly define guest rooms, decks, dining areas & other functional spaces, while stopping your home from feeling two-tonal.
4. Pale gray – Make your home feel cleaner and more modern, while evoking a richer and more emotional reaction.
5. Blue gray – Create a balanced, serene, and ocean-inspired look to your abode, without competing with other design elements.
6. Green gray – Calm and grounded, green gray adds a touch of nature to your space.
7. Warm gray – Daybeds, dressing tables, sofas, and chairs with a coating of warm gray varnish will exude a more traditional, rustic style, creating a comfortable and inviting atmosphere in your residence.
8. Wayward gray – A deep moody color, wayward gray can shift the energy of any space, adding a touch of sublimity and enthusiasm throughout your home.
9. Pebble gray – A wonderfully warm, softly muted, and eminently usable shade, pebble gray is ideal for both indoor and outdoor use.

Pairing & Contrasting Gray with Other Colors in Your Home Design

Blue & Gray House Interior – A Natural, Comfortable Color Scheme

Combining gray with blue will gracefully uplift your interior home decor, recreating sky and coastline settings where these colors naturally exist. Blue has a balancing effect on light gray and white to create a cool and comfortable color scheme in your space.

Design Tip

Pairing blue walls & window treatments with gray flooring furniture can create an amazing nature-like and relaxing atmosphere in your living room, dining room, and home office.

Sharpen Your Entryway with Gray & Yellow Contrasts

While gray is cool and graceful, yellow is bold and attention-grabbing like the sun. So, it’s a great idea to add yellow linings to gray-painted doors, walls, and staircases. Plus you can put sharp yellow sofas against the gray entry lounge walls.

Consider 3-Color Rule – Gray, Yellow, & White Interior Design

• Paint the interior walls yellow with small white stars scattered here and there, making sure it covers around 60% of the interior space.
• Next, apply white to the ceiling, which will account for 20% space coverage.
• In the remaining 20%, i.e., the floor should be covered with gray carpeting, only to balance the intensity of yellow on the walls.

Design Tip

Ria R. Garza, one of our famous interior designers with over two decades of experience in the industry, recommends adding a 4th element to the 3-color rule, i.e. “sprinkling blue dots on the walls to further enhance the grace of your house decor”. “In that case”, she adds, “gray furniture & window sheers will create a better match and an ultimate softening effect.”

FAQs about Incorporating Gray to Home Designs

What is the 3-5-7 rule in decorating?

The 3-5-7 rule is an easy to use, odd number-based formula for those struggling to arrange objects in a visually appealing way. Styling furniture (chairs, sofas, coffee tables) and surfaces like shelves in odd numbers (three, five, or seven) can add visual balance and interest to any arrangement. While odd numbers give a ‘less done’ feel to a space, they work to look pleasing to the eye and boost functionality of a space.

Is gray still in style for home decor?

Gray is still fresh and contemporary, not fading from the spotlight in the design world. Absolutely! Gray is Kate Marker’s – a famous interior designer – one of the 12 tried-and-true home decoration colors. According to her, while soft beiges and warm, crisp whites are replacing gray, it is not truly ‘out’. However, she loves to add a color palette to gray by pairing it with a rich caramel tone or brass accent.

How to make gray look expensive?

To make your cheap all gray house interior look expensive, incorporate velvet or silk window coverings in rich accent colors, such as navy blue, olive green, or burgundy and metallic finishes such as gold, silver, and brass. Couches and paintings in chilli red will give a deep, striking look and touch of luxury to the softly-lit gray-painted interior.

What is the best accent color for gray?

Bold, vibrant colors like blue, pale green, and pink can ‘chill’, accentuate, and add taste to gray. To add warmth to cool, dull gray, consider pairing it with teal, mustard, and burnt orange. Gold is also an effective accent color for gray.

Need More Help?

We are ready to assist with adding gray to your existing home decoration. We invite you to our 24/7 live chat. Or contact us at (800) 863-6109, or customerservice@affordableblinds.com.