The Best Neutral Paint Colors To Enhance Your Rustic Style

Neutral paint colors work well as a backdrop for enhancing the rest of your home decor. However, some colors work better for rustic decorating than others.

Choosing the right paint color for your home’s interior can be a difficult task. Even neutral colors are not that easy to pick anymore with all of the myriad of shades, tones and palette variances. There are some ways to help narrow down the choices and even guarantee that your rustic style will be enhanced.

Tips For Choosing The Best Neutral Paint Colors:

1. Compare paint swatches against each other – Take for instance a gray paint swatch. On its own it can look like a true gray. When compared with another gray swatch, the warm or cool tones can really be seen. Suddenly that first gray swatch looks blue.

2. Once a couple of favorites are chosen, bring the swatches home to test in your own lighting. Differences in lighting can play a big role on how the paint will look on the wall. You can also buy small sample containers of paint. If you want a better idea, you can always paint a section of a wall with the sample or a poster board to tape on the wall before purchasing a whole room full of paint.

3. Do you want to brighten a room? Pick a cooler tone – on the blue side (a subtle blue-gray). Do you want to soften a room? Pick a warmer tone – on the red side (a soft khaki). Warm tones will complement most rustic styles while cool tones can provide a nice contrast. A lot depends on your decor and how you want to enhance it.

I have used the above neutral paint colors in my homes. The following pictures are some of my examples using these colors.

We used Benjamin Moore white dove on the bathroom walls of our previous home, in a flat finish. All of the trim in that house was also in white dove in a glossy finish. I really like the soft warm shade of white.

In our hallway, I used a neutral gray from Martha Stewart in the shade of stone. The door and trim are in the white dove.

Benjamin Moore monroe bisque is a nice warm neutral that works well to enhance most rustic decor. We used a lot of this color in our rustic basement.

And, one of my most favorite colors is Benjamin Moore’s revere pewter. I used this in my quirky little office at my previous home.

Here are some additional rustic style rooms, with neutral paint colors, to give you some more inspiration.

I love the cool contrast of this neutral paint with the dark wood plank wall in the bathroom of Blesser House. The entire look is very rustic chic.

The soft warm tone in this Magnolia home dining room creates the perfect mood for dinner.

Another way to choose paint colors is to draw inspiration from an artistic scene. If you like to decorate rustic and have certain colors in mind, pick a rustic scene with those colors included. Look for the neutrals in the picture and match them up with a paint swatch.

For example, I have some blue items in my new loft kitchen that I knew I wanted to display. I also wanted to decorate somewhat rustic industrial but very neutral. Here is a color swatch that I put together, with a rustic scene, to demonstrate choosing a paint color for my kitchen.

I chose this photo because it is fairly neutral but has some of the brighter blues that I knew I would be decorating with in my kitchen. I also happen to just like the color blue so even though I wanted a very light and neutral shade on the wall, I still wanted just a hint of color. After matching up some Behr paint swatches to the image, the obvious choice for me was the Planetary Silver.

I took a larger swatch of this home and taped it to the wall in several different areas. Since I liked it in my own lighting, I decided to go for it!

Here is how my kitchen looks with the Planetary Silver paint:

You could also use an inspiration piece, in your favorite neutral color, to match up to a paint swatch!