Imagine you’ve been standing in front of a blazing red painting for a few minutes and I bet you’ll start to feel your chest tighten and your breath grow shallow. Maybe your heart rate starts to accelerate. Now turn from that painting and walk toward the window. The sky is a soft, deep blue. You inhale fully, taking the air deep into your lungs and feel a sense of calm spread through your limbs.

Color Impacts Your Mood

Color without a doubt affects your mood and emotions.

But color psychology is a thorny business, friends. Because few if any controlled scientific studies on the impact of color on psychological and emotional functioning have been conducted, the testimony supporting certain claims about color is largely anecdotal. Sound, evidence-backed theories and replicable research just doesn’t exist.

This is because the field has to contend with a number of obstacles. Two in particular stand out: color perception is subjective and color associations are often culturally inflected, if not constructed.

One of the most common examples of this latter conundrum involves the color white (white, of course, isn’t a color but rather the absence of color... but that’s a different story). In the Western world, particularly in the United States, white represents innocence and purity and is often worn by brides at their weddings. In China, on the other hand, white is associated with death and mourning and is often worn at funerals.

Despite these complications, there are some color effects that seem to have semi-universal applicability in terms of how they are described and what they connote. Blue and other cool colors like purple and green are often described as calm. Furthermore, there’s no denying that color maintains a powerful role in our lives. We can FEEL color at work on our minds and bodies. Marketers and design professionals know this too, and they use it to their advantage.

Color in Your Home

You can use it to your advantage as well. Your home is (hopefully) your sanctuary, a place where you spend a ton of your time, and so you want to use color in a way that benefits you.

The wrong color in your study could be partly to blame for your inability to focus (or maybe that’s just Insta...). Or maybe you’re finding that spending too long in your living room is leaving you feeling irritated.

When you’re picking out colors for your walls, make sure to consider how certain colors make you feel so that you can encourage a specific emotional state: calm, peace, focus, warmth, excitement, happiness.

If you struggle with insomnia or regularly find yourself going to bed anxious, your mind racing, colors on the blue side of the spectrum can help set the tone (pun obviously intended) for a more peaceful night's sleep.

But First, Which Paint?

Before we discuss which hues are best for inducing calm in your bedroom, and which might be right for you, which should talk paint brands. I'm loving Clare Paints, a woman-owned, design-forward brand that not only boats a gorgeous library of colors but is also zero VOC.

Volatile Organic Compounds , or VOCs, are emitted as gases from a wide array of industrial solvents and household products. When VOCs are released into the air, these carbon-containing compounds react with nitrogen to form ozone molecules. Ozone, as we know, is a serious threat to the environment.

VOCs can also pollute the air in your home, possibly resulting in adverse health outcomes. Though Clare Paint product may contain trace amounts of VOCs, no carbon-based solvents have been intentionally added to them.

Which Calming Paint Color is Best for Your Bedroom?

So, what colors do you find soothing and calming? Think about what you turn to for peace and solace when you start to lose your cool...

1. Blue

Blue is the gold standard in soothing bedroom tones. Choose this tone if you love the water, whether your jam is swimming in it or just being near it and listening to it falling, rushing, or crashing. Oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds — even pools — all make the list.

Alternatively, if you’re into Big Sky Energy and could gaze up at the heavens all day long, watching the birds and the clouds, then blue is for you.

2. Purple or Indigo (Purple-Blue)

Hues of purple and indigo might strike some people as too dramatic for a bedroom (*me, raising my hand over here*). But for others, they are the epitome of comfort.

Do you feel at home under the cover of night? Do stars in the sky and galaxies spinning hundreds of millions of light-years away fill you with a sense of magic and peace? Or maybe you have a regular meditation practice and visualize indigo tones as you move deeper and deeper inward. If so, you may want to consider a calming shade of indigo for your space.

3. Green

Green is a good choice for those who find healing and peace in nature.

When things get stressful, do you find yourself heading for the park for a walk, for the trail for a hike, to the garden to sit and take it all in (or maybe do some weeding?)? Forest bathers unite — green is your color!

Soft neutrals are also demonstrated to strike most people as calming...

4. Gray

Choose gray if you want a moody (not bad-mood moody) feel in your bedroom that’s tranquil and inviting.

I'm partial to warm, deep grays that make me feel like I've just wandered into a quiet, dimly-lit temple-like sanctuary. I need darkness to sleep, and a darker (but not too dark!) gray facilitates my hibernation-level needs. If I were to choose from Clare's library, I'd throw so major Shade up on the wall for sure. ;)

5. Beige

Choose beige if you’re someone who lives for warm and golden undertones. Perhaps the thought of warm sand or sun-bleached tiles under your feet sends you to planet Zen.

6. Greige

Greige is a delightful combination of grey and beige. Choose this color if you don’t want to go with white but can’t commit to gray or beige. Greige is multifaceted neutral with a long list of pleasant connotations.

7. White and Cream

These airy, ethereal hues are, to state the obvious, classic. When choosing white or cream, avoid stark or excessively bright tones and go for something with more dimension.

Choose carefully, as white can carry with it hints of other colors. Look at the clouds: often you’ll see them inflected with pink, red, purple, blue, and yellow.

The Best Calming Paint Color for Your Bedroom

There's power — and calm — in color. Make sure you choose your wall color wisely so that your bedroom can feel like a true sanctuary that soothes your soul and fits your needs, temperament, and (self) love language.

The 7 Best Calming Paint Colors for Your Bedroom

Color Impacts Your Mood

Color in Your Home

But First, Which Paint?