This Is the Most Versatile Color for Your Home, According to Top Designers
Spoiler: You're going to want to paint a room chocolate brown.
"Everyone has done a brown room," says New York–based Markham Roberts. The decorator and two-time author knows of what he speaks: His own mentor and former boss, Mark Hampton, was known for his love of the rich color—as were many other influential 20th-century designers such as David Hicks, Albert Hadley, and Billy Baldwin.
For Roberts, the fervor for the rich hue comes from the color's composite nature. "It has a bit of all colors in it, so every color looks beautiful against it." As Baldwin proved time and again, the warm neutral paint color is an ideal foil for artwork with bold colors (which is one of the 2021 color trends predicted by top interior designers).
Although brown may feel like an unexpected color for your home, the rich color remains a perennial favorite among top designers, particularly for dining rooms, home libraries, living rooms, and staircases ranging in style from formal and traditional to casual and contemporary. Here, discover our 10 best brown paint colors, inspired by rooms decorated by some of the design world's most legendary brown devotees.
David Netto Dining Room
The light-filled dining room of this Connecticut house designed by David Netto features walls painted with Tanner’s Brown (Farrow & Ball) in full gloss. Plaster cone hanging light, Rose Uniacke
Billy Baldwin Living Room
Often credited for kicking off the chocolate brown craze, interior decorator Baldwin believed that walls coated with the color should be lacquered, as seen here in the Manhattan apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Eastman, designed by Baldwin in the 1970s.
Markham Roberts Living Room
In the living room of this Connecticut home designed by Markham Roberts, chocolate brown walls are a foil for a host of antiques, including a French bergère from the Art Deco period that mingles with a 19th-century Indian shield, Chinese famille noire vase (1780), and an English peat bucket (1850). Chair upholstery, Cowtan & Tout. Antiques, James Sansum Fine and Decorative Art
Mark Hampton Living Room
Though he worked for David Hicks, Parish-Hadley, and McMillen (all brown room enthusiasts) before opening his firm, decorator Mark Hampton considered Baldwin a great influence. His Southampton, Long Island, living room reflected a shared affinity for glossy brown walls.
Matthew Carter Stairwell
For his Harbour Island cottage, designer Matthew Carter took palette inspiration from "a few simple colors," including "dark brown and a whole lot of white. This combination feels elegantly organic to me."
Markham Roberts Dining Room
For his own Upstate New York dining room, Roberts, who considers his fellow Indiana native and former boss Mark Hampton a mentor, coated the walls in brown with a bit of purple mixed in "to make them warmer by daylight or candlelight," he says in his book Decorating the Way I See It (Vendome Press, 2014).
Billy Baldwin Living Room
Baldwin was such a brown devotee that he lacquered the walls of his Manhattan living room with the rich color. Caned furniture, potted tree, contemporary art, and brass accents are other hallmarks of Baldwin's style.
Ashley Whittaker Library
This New York home library, designed by decorator Ashley Whittaker, who worked for Roberts before going solo, features several hallmarks of the most beautiful chocolate brown rooms: brass accents, high-gloss finishes, animal motifs, and a David Hicks geometric carpet.
Ruthie Sommers Stairwell
In this Chicago townhouse, designer Ruthie Sommers glamorized a small stairwell nook with brown lacquered walls and upholstered doors. Antique lantern, John Rosselli. Vintage bench in Manuel Canovas velvet. Doors in Manuel Canovas toile. Floors, Ann Sacks
Jeffrey Bilhuber Den
In Stephanie Booth Shafran's Los Angeles home designed by Jeffrey Bilhuber (also greatly influenced by Baldwin), masculine meets feminine style in a sexy den with walls lacquered a rich reddish-brown, contemporary art, and animal patterned upholstery. See more of this home in Shafran's book, You're Invited: Classic, Elegant Entertaining (Rizzoli, 2020).
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