What is the color greige exactly and how do I pick the right greige for my home?

The science behind my favorite color and which Sherwin William greiges I recommend for challenging light conditions (aka, Seattle, Portland and the Pacific Northwest)

Greige bedroom by Chango & Co. SOURCE: https://www.chango.com/projects/737-park-avenue

Home design trends change over time, with new trends developing as an antidote to the last one. In the early 2000s, people preferred homes with gold and pink-beige colors in a Tuscan style. In the early 2010s, we switched to cooler gray and white shades. By the late 2010s and early 2020s, we softened the cool grays with white and black. These days, you can't miss the prevalence of white and black everywhere. Now, in response, cutting edge interior designers are starting to incorporate warmer tones into their designs and it's only a matter of time before the white and black trend starts to feel outdated. Keeping up with the house trends can be such an expensive challenge!

But here's a tip to make your home feel current and adapt to the upcoming warm trends: GREIGE. Greige is a beautiful transitional color that incorporates a touch of warmth, a touch of white, and a touch of gray. These elements allow it to span across multiple trends, creating a timeless look for our homes.

What is Greige exactly?

Let's start by defining gray. Gray can exist anywhere on a color wheel. You can have a red gray, a blue gray, a green gray. Pure gray paint is created by mixing black and white, which is then added to hues. Adding gray desaturates the hue, and you progress from a really bright hue (e.g. bright blue) to a very weak, muted hue (e.g. gray blue). You can measure that desaturation using chroma. So grays have low chroma and can exist with any color.

Now to greige. I've scoured the internet for a precise, scientific definition but haven't found a definitive answer. But based on how many color experts identify and review specific "greige" paint colors, I've come up with the following classification using the Munsell Color System:

Color Wheel with Munsell Hue Family

• Hue: Greige colors are grays specific to the Yellow Family. They have a Hue between 1 and 9 Y.

• Value: You can measure a color's relative lightness or darkness based on a Value scale with 0 representing dark and 10 representing light. With Greige, I look for paint colors with a Value between 4 and 8. Anything lower than 4 is really dark and higher than 8 looks white.

• Chroma: As mentioned before, Chroma represents how much a color is saturated or desaturated, aka how much gray has been added to a color, and is measured on a scale of 0 (fully desaturated) to 15 (a pure hue with no gray added). In my view, greiges are fairly desaturated, so I look for paint colors with a chroma ranging between .2 and 1.1.

• LRV: LRV, or Light Reflectance Value, is a precise measure of how much light a color reflects. An LRV of 0 means that a color is absorbing all light waves and reflecting none, aka it's black. An LRV of 100 means that a color is reflecting all light waves, aka it's pure white. Any paint color with an LRV higher than about 75 is generally going to look white. So with Greiges, I'm focusing on paints with an LRV somewhere between 25 (pretty dark) and 75 (pretty light).

When I search my database of Sherwin Williams paint colors along the above mentioned parameters, I was about to find 80 unique Greige paint colors! (don't worry, I'll write a separate post on Benjamin Moore greiges, I promise). Some well known colors that fall under these parameters include Agreeable Gray, Worldly Gray, Repose Gray, Mindful Gray.

So how do I pick which Greige to use in my home?

I get it; having 80 Greige options from Sherwin Williams can be overwhelming. Let me help you narrow it down. To start, let's get rid of the colors that might end up looking purple or muddy in your home. How? Well, we use science, of course! Most of these colors look great in mid-day, indirect sunlight, like a nice late morning on a sunny day in the Pacific Northwest. But as the day goes on or if the weather gets gray (which happens about seven months a year here in Seattle), the light changes and messes with the colors we see. This is what we mean by "unbalanced" light (there is a technical definition, but we'll get to that on another day). When the light is unbalanced, a large segment of Greige colors can sometimes appear purple or fleshy. That's why you see many blog posts discussing the undertones of Greige. These aren't actual undertones; it's a distorted wavelength that affects what you see.

So, which Greiges might look purple or fleshy in unbalanced light? I suggest avoiding any Yellow hue from 1 Yellow to 5 Yellow on the Munsell Color System (or a Hue degree of 70 to 100 in the CIE Labs Color System). By doing that, we eliminate 56 of 80 colors (yes, that's right, 70%!!!!) from our original list. Sadly, this also rules out some of the popular Greiges you might find on the internet:

• Agreeable Gray (Hue of 2.3 Yellow): will look fleshy in unbalanced light

• Repose Gray (Hue of 3.2 Yellow): yes, that warm gray is going to get very cool

• Functional Gray (Hue of 0.6 Yellow): Yep, will look purple/muddy/fleshy

• Don't worry, we'll talk about the ever popular Revere Pewter when we discuss Benjamin Moore greiges, because it also falls in this range and will definitely look purple when it is overcast!

Greige Paint Colors in the Yellow Family

Recommended Greiges for Unbalanced, Challenging Light Conditions (aka the Pacific Northwest)

Now that we've eliminated 70% of Sherwin William Greige options, let's break down a few of remaining Greige options. These are all lovely colors that are not too desaturated (aka too gray). I've broken them down into Light and Medium. If you want a color that will look almost off-white in sunlight, focus on the light greige options. If you want a darker shade of color, start with the medium greige options.

As you narrow down your color options within the light and medium greige groups below, I recommend you test the colors out for yourself in your own home. Start by ordering some swatches via Samplize! With their large format peel-and-stick paint swatches, Samplize offers an easy solution for testing paint colors in different areas of your home without having to buy cans of paint. I recommend putting them on a black backdrop to better understand their true color without interference from your existing paint.

Light Greige Options

Recommended Light Greige Paint Colors

First Star | Crushed Ice | Winter Walk | Skipping Rocks | Sedate Gray | Roycroft Mist Gray

Medium Greige Options

Recommended Medium Greige Paint Colors

Techno Gray | Allegory | Silver Gray | Chatroom | Gateway Gray | Downing Stone

Need more help picking out paint! Feel free to schedule a free 20-minute introductory call with me to discuss your project and learn more about paint consultations with Ashley Rajagopal Home!