What colour should you paint a north facing room?
Paint a north facing room a warm colour, not a white one. North light is grey and blue, so brilliant white walls reflect that coldness back at you and the room ends up looking greyer than it did before. Colours with yellow, pink or red underneath them replace the warmth the room isn't getting from the sun. A butter yellow, a plaster pink, a terracotta, or a warm cream with a yellow base will all work. The alternative, if you like a dark room, is to go the other way and paint the whole room including the ceiling in something deep, which works better in a north facing room than anywhere else in the house.
That's the short answer. The rest of this is why, and how to test it before you spend a weekend on the wrong colour.
Why is white the wrong colour for a north facing room?
Nearly every north facing room I get asked about has been painted brilliant white, or is about to be.
I understand why. The room feels dark, so you reach for the brightest thing on the shelf. It's the logical move and it's the wrong one.
North light comes in grey and blue. It's indirect, it barely shifts through the day, and it's the same cold light you see in photographs of places north of here. That's what's landing on your walls from first thing to last thing.
Paint those walls brilliant white and you've handed that light a blank canvas. The room doesn't get brighter. It gets colder. You end up with walls that read faintly grey by three in the afternoon, and a room nobody in the house chooses to sit in.
A lot of housing round here makes it worse. Victorian terraces, stone cottages, anything with a deep window reveal and a smaller window opening: less light gets in to start with, and what does get in is cold.
Which paint colours work in a north facing room?
The job isn't to make a north facing room brighter, because you can't. There's a fixed amount of light coming through that window and paint doesn't add any.
The job is to put back the warmth the room isn't getting for free. That means a colour with yellow, pink or red underneath it. A butter yellow, a plaster pink, a terracotta, or a proper warm cream, the sort with yellow in the base rather than blue. Farrow & Ball's Hay if you want the room to feel sunny, Setting Plaster if you want it soft, and White Tie if you want something close to a white without the cold in it.
Check the undertone, not the name. Half the paints called "soft white" or "warm stone" are cool underneath, and in north light the undertone is the only thing you'll see.
Should a north facing room be painted a dark colour instead?
If you like a dark room, a north facing room is the best one in the house to have one.
Drench it. Walls, ceiling, woodwork, the lot, in something deep. A burgundy, or a proper dark green. The room was never going to be bright, so stop fighting it and it becomes the cosiest room you've got. That's usually a snug, a dining room or a downstairs loo, but I've also done it in a north facing bedroom and it was lovely.
The half measure is what fails here. A dark wall with a brilliant white ceiling sitting above it draws a hard line round the top of the room, brings the ceiling down and makes the wall look like a mistake rather than a decision.
How do you test paint colours in a north facing room?
Don't paint sample patches straight onto the wall. The colour that's already there skews everything you're looking at, and a small patch never reads the same as a whole wall.
Two coats onto a big piece of lining paper instead, then move it round the room. Look at it by the window and again on the darkest wall. Look at it at nine in the morning and at four in the afternoon. Look at it with the lamps on, because that's when you'll actually be in there.
Most colours that fail in a north facing room don't fail on the chart in the shop. They fail at four o'clock on a grey Tuesday in November.
What does it actually cost to work with an interior designer?
I've written a guide that gives you the real numbers: what a room costs, what a whole house costs, and what you're paying for at each stage. No ranges so wide they tell you nothing.
You'll also get my Sunday letter, where I write about doing one room properly, usually whatever I'm in the middle of at home.
What colour should the ceiling be in a north facing room?
Brilliant white ceiling paint goes on without anyone thinking about it, and it's doing the same thing overhead that it does on the walls. If you've warmed the walls up, take the wall colour onto the ceiling too, or a lighter version of it. The room closes over properly and the top of the wall stops looking like a cut-off point.
Common questions about north facing rooms
How do I know if a room is north facing? Stand in the room looking at the window and open the compass app on your phone. If it reads somewhere around north, between roughly 315 and 45 degrees, the room is north facing. You can also tell by watching it: a north facing room never gets direct sun on the floor at any point in the day.
Can paint make a north facing room brighter? No. Paint can't add light to a room, it can only change what happens to the light already coming in. What paint can do is change how warm or cold the room feels, which is usually the actual complaint behind "this room is too dark."
Is grey a bad colour for a north facing room? Most greys are, yes, because the majority of them are blue based and north light is already blue. A warm grey with a yellow or brown undertone can work, but you need to check the undertone rather than trusting the name on the tin.
Does a north facing room need more lighting? Usually, and it's the part people skip. Warm paint fixes the daytime problem. Several lamps at different heights, rather than one overhead light, fixes the evening one.
What about north facing rooms in period properties? They're harder. Deep reveals, smaller openings and thick walls all reduce how much light reaches the middle of the room, so the warm colour matters more, not less. Painting the reveal and the window frame the same colour as the wall helps, because a white frame against a warm wall draws your eye straight to the darkest part of the room.
If you've got a north facing room and there's a paint decision coming up, book a free 15 minute intro call. Tell me the room, which way it faces and what you were about to put on it, and we'll talk about working together on it.