Green seems to be a new neutral, I think it brings freshness in a lot of decor schemes, I disagree that it looks awful with oak or maple, it depends on the tone of wood.

I like the dirty/greyed greens myself, it's a color I wear in clothes ; although my walls are white in my home...

Trends come and go. If you see one you don't like just wait til next month, there will be another that might be more to your style. :-) It's always been this way and always will. Enough trends to suit everyone.

You sound like me about a year or so ago. All I saw was gold, red, yellow and green in decor and asked if anyone liked anything else. With that, members started posting their grey, taupe, brown, blue, black and pink walls.

When I came to this forum I hated green. I couldn't imagine having green walls anywhere in my house. Then as time evolved and I began seeing all the lovely geeens out there up on the walls of posters, I realize I was falling in love with green. Who knew? Even DH started liking it after I showed him some photo's from this forum.

I started with RH's silver sage and well, now I have 4 diffferent greens in my new home along with pale yellow, blue, etc.

Well, green looks horrible in my house - with my furniture and with the light in my house. In fact everything looks a lot warmer/yellower. All my windows have a NE or SW exposure and sunlight washes into the rooms all day. I've had several shades of green walls and have finally gotten everything repainted. I don't really care what's in fashion. I have two priorities - I like it, and it looks good with my furniture.

I agree with mitchdesj on green being a great neutral. It looks fabulous when you are trying to tone down the orange of some cabinets. If I ever re-do our bedroom, it's going to be sage green for sure. ;c)

I hadnt really noticed that it was "in fashion" as the muddy greens have always been my preference. I also disagree that greens dont work with oak or maple-- as I think that is one the of reasons it is so often suggested to others-- because it works well with the golden and even orangey oaks and maples. Plus, many green tones are considered peaceful and relaxing.

If you don't like the greens, go with what you like and what works in your house.

I didn't think it was trendy. When I think of trendy a color scheme that comes to mind is brown and pink. I'd go with what you like and what suits your house.

I think green is enjoying a resurgence, because it's been negelected for awhile.

I also think it has great value for people who are trying to balance golden oak, which tends to be orange.

Orange and green balance each other well because they're on opposite sides of the color wheel. Orange is yellow+red, and green is yellow+blue. Because they both contain yellow, they play well together.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I also disagree that greens dont work with oak or maple-- as I think that is one the of reasons it is so often suggested to others-- because it works well with the golden and even orangey oaks and maples. Plus, many green tones are considered peaceful and relaxing.

ITA with funkyart, some shades of green work really well with golden/honey tone oak cabinets, while other colors such as reds/oranges serve to only further enhance the orange hues in them.

When asked for advice, I offer ideas based on what I feel will look good based on what I have learned from seeing so many others projects and working on those of my own. I am definitely NOT into trends. I don't care one lick about what is 'in'. I put things in my home that I love and that feel good to me AND I ALWAYS encourage others to do the same!

I'm having my kitchen painted sage to help temper the golden oak. I love green, esp. sage, but if it didn't work with the oak, I wouldn't consider it.

Speaking of green...

Today I was visiting my daughter in San Francisco. One of our favorite pastimes is going through open houses for sale. We hit about 5 today, all older places recently renovated and nicely staged. I was heartened to see how light the walls generally were (with white ceilings). One color we kept seeing was an offwhite with a slight but definite greenish undertone. It was whisper fresh and looked gorgeous. Needless to say, none of the realtors had a clue what color it was.

And ALL the bathrooms were gray-blue with crisp white trim.

I have one room that is a light green-- it's the playroom which overlooks the backyard, so it's calming and plays into the view.

I am also going to repaint my dining room green, but I want an OLD look, not trendy. I'm thinking a darker green, but not one with gray in it. In fact, I'm going to post soon for advice on that! I am thinking of using stencils, too, so it will look like wallpaper a la late 1800s.

To me, green CAN look very trendy . . .or out-of-date . . .or classic. It depends on the green and everything else in the room.

I'm definitely not into trends and I suppose will always been one or two steps behind them because I don't usually like what's "in style" because I have the same style all the time.

I agree with the PP that said that green has become the new neutral. The main rooms of my house are a a warm grey neutral because I have a ton of artwork that reflect my style and I don't want the wall color to compete.

I don't know if I'd call it trendy vs. popular, but in any case, that's the beauty of paint...it's PAINT and can be inexpensively changed. If you want to go "trendy", why not? It's not going to be the albatross that green applicances were.

Also wanted to add growing up my Mom had and still does, blue everywhere. Mom says she grew up with the green and was sick of it. I've seen rooms on here that look nice with blue but I just don't gravitate towards it. So now when I do have kids they'll probably grown up gaggin on green, red, and gold. :)

Before I joined this forum I had no idea it was trendy and had already painted one room a soft, warm green. I've always loved English country house style and green is often used with that style. When I think of trendy I think of gray which is a paint color you couldn't give away a few years ago and now it's everywhere (yes, even on two walls of my living room). I can't imagine painting anything in a color that I don't absolutely love. However, when a certain color is in fashion one sees it used in all the decorating magazines, and sometimes it's a revelation how beautiful a certain color can be that's never been considered before. To me that's actually part of the thrill of decorating. In real life, most of the people I know still paint everything off-white!

LOL. Greens and wheats are the paints that work bestwith oaks and any hardwood/softwood, pine, etc. It is natural to pair leaves with wood.

I have just - this evening - repainted the soffits in my kitchen in green, and I think it complements the 1951 maple cabinets. Until I removed the 1970s wallpaper I didn't know that the original color had been green, but slightly darker.

The color I used is one that Sherwin Williams calls Rice Paddy. It's light and slightly yellow; I chose it (for cabinet doors in another room) because of a three-color card from a Martha Stewart paint display, where it was an accent to a light yellow along with a light brown (about the same hue as the maple).

Green used to be thought of as bringing out the best in wood tones, but not every green works with every wood finish. I tend to like darker and greyer greens with dark wood, lighter and yellower with light. My bedroom is green as well (I haven't repainted it) and the very pale green is OK with the medium oak, which is more greenish itself than orange, but a slightly greyer green might be better.

I reread this thread and feel I need to address something else in the OP: Why all the green? Do most people like being trendy? There doesn't seem to be any individualism anymore

I hardly think that using a wall color that others have used suggests a lack of individualism. Wall color is but one element of a room. Take Baby Turtle for instance-- it is a muddy green many people on this forum have used -- but take a look at the rooms. Each room is different and unique. And, in fact, the color looks very different in each room because it is paired with different colors, has different lighting, it has the influence of different individuals.

There are plenty of other colors that are used frequently-- RH silver sage (blue), SW tobacco road (gold), SW ivorie (pale yellow).. could you call them trendy? I think not-- they are popular but I would suggest they are popular because they are all pleasing colors that work well with wood tones and are adaptable with other colors.

Again, if you don't find greens pleasing, don't use them. You can make a beautiful home with whatever colors work for you.

Lots of people these days are installing wood flooring and also many are leaning more to dark woods. These tones look great with many greens. Green surrounds us in grass and plants and trees. It's only natural to bring it indoors too. Many of us are trying to extend that beautiful outdoor feeling into our interior living spaces.

But just as there are many who love shades of green, there are those who are looking for a light coffee shade or a rose beige or a periwinkle blue. Some people would never paint a room in any shade of green. I tend to ignore the beige threads and glom onto the sage or grey-green or moss threads. I click away from the 'how to find the right blue-grey?" thread and onto the 'Looking for sage for kitchen' threads. If you are seeing green, you must be hitting the green threads........right?

Red

(and yes......many who actually are interested enough in getting just the exact, precise, amazing, all-embracing, fabulous, and perfect paint color on their walls, DO like knowing their choices are also popular. We all have our individual styles, but most of us would be quite pleased to have a friend ask us for the name of our wall color.)

Hi I enjoyed reading this thread. I was attracted to it because i just painted my first green room ever. My tiny front entry (tho calling it a room is a stretch I guess) which has orangy wood in it and it is delightful. So welcoming and cheerful and it is beautiful with the wood, which I hadn't really thought out (how green helps orange wood) until I read some of the above. It is also nice to look at from my caramel colored living room causing me to want to leave the door to the entry open. I used SW Baize Green in the entry. Okmoreh I thought I saw Rice paddy and liked it when I was looking so I checked just now and it is only 2 strips away. RP is much more subtle and yellowy and I decided my small dark space could use the brightness of baize (only one window and that in the door).
My mistake was painting the stair risers Leap Frog. Its just too much from the front porch, lol.
Both greens are in a very old green "yellowware" bowl that belonged to my grandmother and is just around the corner in a cabinet in the living room. Haven't decided what to do yet about the leapfrog. I'm painting the stairwell walls the same pale yellow as my kitchen which is 2 rooms away or 3 rather if my little green entry box is a room.) Its amazing how much brighter color is than white.
kathy
Ps I usually post decorating things on the old house forum. Is been fun to look at your fun and very active site too.

I used green as an accent color for a long time and simply love it. Not so much on the walls. I think it was last week someone posted a room with a beautiful pastel green and had I seen it earlier I may have chosen that color for my sitting room. I wish I could remember who had it!

I have a lot of green depression glass and absolutely LOVE those colors, but I can't put green on a wall. Most greens on walls gives me a depressed feeling for some reason. lol

I do understand about the "trendy" remark. My new kitchen colors may be trendy now, but I've wanted these colors since I was in my 20s and they certainly weren't trendy then.

Ooh, I would love it if the green wall people here would puth their pictures up in this topic so I could find the green I liked. lol. It's not too late for me to change the color. :) Wait, my dh HATES green walls with a passion. But I'd still like to see them.

One of my color teachers has a theory that the human eye has adapted to the color green because we are surrounded by so much green in the natural world, as Red suggested. IOW, it is actually physiologically easier for us to see green because we are surrounded by green. IMO, that is what makes green the "ultimate neutral" on a biological level.

As for trends, I think the whole green trend (environmental awareness) is spilling over into print advertising and interior design. For a while, the more we see of something, the more we like it/are comfortable with it. Then, at a certain point, saturation sets in and we need a change.

I do wonder if our physiological evolution to be comfortable with green will push that point of saturation/overload way out in time.

I'm not even going to address the issue of individualism brought up by the OP. That's just silly...

You really can't just lump all greens into one category (trendy, neutral, whatever). I have a very neutral green in my bedroom. Some may think green is trendy but I have had various neutral greens in my bedroom for ten years. Now, in my laundry room I have a bright green. Definitely trendy!

There's such a wide range of hues in the green family. I think there's a green to go with any other color.

I've always liked green as a color in general but have only recently begun painting rooms in greens. I didn't do it because everybody else began to, or because I saw a picture that I liked. I just really started to think hard about my color selections and it turns out that greens suit our home and decorating style quite well.
Greens also seem to integrate well with most other colors that we favor. I thought that greens would interfere with the "flow" between rooms, but actually the opposite seems to be true.
I will say that greens are not always easy to get right (not as bad as yellows, but still a little tricky). The room that I'm finishing up now had a dozen different samples on multiple walls for weeks. Eventually we got down to about 3 choices that were very close to one another, but the subtle differences eventually came to the surface and the choice became very clear. (FWIW we went with BM 473 Weekend Getaway in Aura Matte.)

Green is by far the best neutral that goes with everything else so it's really easy to decorate around it. Duh, wish I had taken a liking to it years ago!!

concrete, please post some photo's if you can. We love seeing photo's and gaining inspiration from each other.

When I worked for the Fed all interiors were painted green and I asked why as I worked for Engineers, and was told that it was easier on the vision, caused less eye damage and thus, it did not have to be changed to affect compliance for health reasons. Something about artificial lighting and green and that was a gazillion years ago but have never forgotten the main reason, just forgot all the minutia.

I pretty much tend to think of green as a neutral nowadays. I'm not sure I understand the OP's comment about going back to the 70s with avocado hues ... as stated above, there are myriad green hues, avocado being only one of them, and I don't see a lot of suggestions here for avocado-painted walls.

I'm sitting in a green room right now :-) I didn't know it was trendy 2 years ago when I picked it - just started out with the carpet color (Fresh Meadow) and then went looking for paints that looked good with it. Didn't like Mint Chocolate chip that my artist brother picked (he also liked Vanilla Ice Cream for the kitchen/FR - hmmm, see a pattern here?). Finally settled on Thornton Sage (very grey green that looks blue in all my pics so I won't bother posting one) and Antique Jade (which DH loves and I thought would be too dark for hallway/stairwell but we may end up repainting everything the Jade next time). These colors are very calm and soothing and I love the Jade LR. Looks good with my Honey Maple stained trim, also the rooms where I just have a clear satin poly or beeswax on the pine trim. All the green rooms face west (the Jade LR also has a big south-facing window) and I think they look fine.

The east (and south bay) kitchen/FR we did in Navajo White and I think it goes well with the Honey Maple pine trim and the Cider oak cabinets. Anything more yellow wouldn't look good with the oak (or the morning sun! Filtered Sunlight was really yellow!).

I have always loved green, and have loved to wear it. There were a couple of decades there where it was almost impossible to find green clothing. If I wanted it, I had to find it in a thrift store. I'm really glad green came back. But hey, if it's not for you, look in the color threads in our Gallery and the room threads, and you'll see lots of other beautiful colors.

I actually used to hate green many years ago but I find that over the last several years the new shades of green have been just beautiful and whenever I see a green room I am really drawn to it - it is beautiful, on the neatral side and fresh.
I like to think I am not a trend follower (or maybe I am on the subconscience). :)

I clearly don't consider green trendy - I consider it classic when done right. I'd hardly peg myself or my decorating as trendy (I hope I run screaming in the opposite direction) but there is green throughout my home. It's just more natural to me w/ all of our old dark wood. It leaves me warm and cozy while being relaxed at the same time.

Please tell me you weren't writing that post while sitting in a silver sage and chocolate room because there's a combo I'm tired of seeing everywhere. Oops - spoke too soon - DD's nursery is silver sage and chocoloate. Okay - well at least it's a girls nursery that's blue and brown and not a boys rm. I guess that's slightly off trend a bit (but not much!).

If you look at the primary and secondary colors, green is about the easiest one to get a good tint with ease. It's harder to get a good red, blue, purple, orange, that's for sure. And some people have trouble finding the right gold/yellow.
So green, apart from being ubiquitous outdoors this time of year, is a very pliant color.
I have two green rooms.
Casey

I would agree with others who have suggested that green works almost as a neutral and also that it is easier to work with than most other colors (yellows reds and blues, IMO, are all more difficult.) I have yet to meet a green I don't like (though not loving hunter green at the moment - oversaturation from the 90's I believe.) I also have to believe there is an element of "eco-awareness" that makes people gravitate toward green, the color of nature.

This is a very interesting thread!
I have liked green (light apple, celery greeen) for a long time. As one of the members mentioned, it was hard to find this color in clothing before, and when I did(shirts or blouses) I would buy it. I am so glad is trendy now. I painted my bedroom about three years ago in a celery green (the walls had two tones-a darker and lighter one). At the same time, I also painted the bathroom. I still love it in both rooms. In the bedroom, it makes my mahogany furniture look great, and the room look so much warm and calm. I recently painted my living room in a soft, apple green (I mixed it with brown to get something close to a soft-yellow-olive green. I loved the color that I got!. It is warm, inviting, and everything comes to life with the color cause it is very cheery. My adjoining room is the dining room and it is in red! so it looks great. I am even thinking of painting the wall next to the living room in green and leaving only one wall of the Dining Room in red. I am re-painting my bedroom, and the bathroom in the same color as the living room.
I would have to confess though.........that I wouldnt probably have done the living room, if it wasn´t so trendy now. I am sure that a lot of us usually pick a ¨save¨color in the living room that would go with anything and everything, but I see green in my house for a long time now, even when will not be as trendy! Cause the good thing about green family is a very flexible color, and all the accent colors look great!

Easy on the eyes, because it is vision-friendly and it is a neutral. God put green here to go with everything in the universe. It's the most natural neutral that exists followed by the sand colors of the desert which are longing to be green. Remember the world was awash with blue and then the greens and the sands. The oceans are blue and green, the trees are green and brown, the earth is a color of brown, tender white sand.

Hmmm..I'm trying to imagine ROY G. BIV without his middle initial. Can't!

I think most people like a variety of color, but most don't necessarily want them on their walls. Green is neutral without being too boring. It blends well with woodwork and can be calming (who can forget institutional green??) I think that adds a lot to its popularity, but I hesitate to say trendy. I think pale shades of nearly every color have been "done". Surely not all of them were trendy. Now that I think about it, I think neutral is just in, whether it be with green, greys, warm yellows or tans.

I am in the process of painting my living room green right now.. as we speak LOL.
It's Ralph Lauren Tapestry Green and I love it. I Looovvve the way it looks against my orange oak trim and woodwork! I don't care for the orange oak but with the green up against it .. it looks fantastic!
So I have to disagree that green doesn't look good with oak.
I just love color! I painted my LR Aqua turquoise before it was *trendy* like 10 years ago LOL.
Everyone rolled their eyes at me. I didn't care. I had NO IDEA that green was even a popular color right now..
I just like happy rich colors.
Now I DID realize that red walls were trendy and for awhile it seemed like everyone had to have a red dining room or red walls somewhere.
I don't care..even though the red walls are probably overdone I *just* painted my entry Bangkok Rust.
I LOVE it!
I know what you mean though about individualism. Sometimes it seems that everyone is given the same advice about furniture, furnishings, art and other decor. My house can never be accused of being *like everyone else's* It's just too old. Too wierd. Too messed up LOL.

I'm a redhead w/green eyes - I've always worn lots of green! I love it. from pale/light to the dark, dark evergreens. any color of green is found somewhere in nature - as someone said, 'easy on the eyes'.
I don't think I've ever had a green wall before tho... I'm planning one in my new place - my bedroom. to go w/lavender and purple. Purple is another of my favorite colors.

I was on vacation and missed this post.

Funny, but I thought that blue was the new *trendy* color. I'm with Red about the greens looking so nice with the hardwoods that lots of people are installing. It's a natural with most oaks and maples.

That said, my homes are always done in golds and yellows because they are my favorites, and always have been. I usually have a green room somewhere.

There really aren't that many basic colors. Most don't like pink or purple rooms, though I've seen some lovely ones, and that leaves blue, gold/yellow, red and green (and, of course, true neutrals). Red has been done in dining rooms for so many years that some want to change it out.

I am one who does not like green painted walls, at all, at least not in my house. I would rather have white walls. I don't know why. I am more of a blue or gold wall person. I am not into red walls either, maybe because I watch too many cop and robber shows and red paint looks like blood to me. When I was shopping for fabric for my camelback sofa it was so hard to find any that did not have green or red. I wanted a camel and blue combination which I finally found. So I am in the minority and agree with the OP - why all the green? The green lovers decided blue popularity has lasted long enough.

So, I now have a green bedroom (BM Camouflage). My furniture is still a mish-mash from old family castoffs to newer stuff I'd never ever buy again. It's okay...mostly I'm asleep when I'm in that room. :)

But just a note in favor of green. I have 6 different wood colors in that room, from deep espresso to natural wicker. They ALL look fabulous next to the green. Dare I say, less of a mish-mash?