Most of our house has exposure like that -- the colors that we put in the most extreme rooms were BM Richmond Gray/Flowering Herbs (same color, different names) in the family room and EK Pumice in our bedroom. We also make sure there's lots of light *in* the rooms from a variety of sources.

Oh--we also used BM Titanium in a hallway that only gets natural light from the rooms it opens into, with overhead can lights.

They're all kind of nuanced but light tones rather than 'statement' colors, iykwim. Great backgrounds for art :)

We also used 1/2 strength BM Pleasant Valley (a greyed-out blue) in a wall that wraps around rooms and goes into the front hall--intersects with BM Brandon Beige in the southern exposure room and full-strength Pleasant Valley up the southern exposure stairwell. It's the most 'statement' color we used and we sure love it better than the Devine dried-blood color the PO had on that wall. It dragged things down so badly.

hth--

'Light tones rather than statement colors' - flyleft said it perfectly.

I had a terra cotta color in my north room, and it just never looked right. DH kept telling me to leave it. I finally painted it a light bluish-green (prettier than it sounds), and everyone was amazed! It really made the entire room look so much better.

So, I would go with light tones, and leave the darker colors to a different area. :) Good luck!

I'm afraid I've mentioned my son's room more than once, but we just did that with a BM Burnt Peanut Red ceiling (hmm, hope it doesn't resemble dried blood!) with BM buttermilk walls - has a high ceiling, just one north-facing window that usually has the curtain closed, looks very warm and cozy.

Above that in a north-facing attic room (again, just one window) I'm taking the "fresh crisp bright" approach with very clean bright/light blue walls and ceiling, an (ahem) neon green floor (it's an old house with a thrashed wood floor), and bright white trim. It looks pretty good so far if I do say so myself. Clean, energizing.

Just for two extreme approaches...

KarinL

I would tend to stay away from greys and blues in a north face room as they are cool colors. If you are looking for a neutral, I would go with a yellow based one to warm up the room. Accent color I like to use in a north facing room , well actually any room, is some form of red.

All our bedrooms and our living and dining rooms face in a northerly direction, and the master bedroom also has windows facing west. We also have a covered porch that extends the entire length of the house outside of these rooms. We live on the coast, and this orientation allows us the best view of the water from these rooms.

I've used yellow in our bedroom, and previously had a pale shade of yellow in our dining and living areas, with red accents in furniture and pillows. I've repainted the LR/DR now in Tobacco Road, and that color still works well. I once tried a blue in the master, and it just didn't work out well at all, so the yellow I'm using now,, with white wainscoting and bead board, keeps it light and cheerful.

How is it that half of the people are using greens and grays and the other half recommends against them? You guys are very helpful :)

We previously had that room painted a yellow green color (so both the "green" people and the "yellow" people would be happy :)). After remodeling we have a more open floor space, and now need to find a color that would work there as well as in the opposite room which is facing SE and NE. I tried some yellows and yellow-greens but they didn't seem to work, a little more yellow and it is "too yellow" or too green in the SE/NE room, a little less and it looks peach in the NW room. What looks beige in the SE/NE room, looks pink in the NW room - ugh!
So may be I should stay with the "green/gray/blue" team :)

Wow, so many different experiences! Half our rooms face north (long skinny rowhouse) and we've had success with deep, vivid colors. The lighter, more subtle colors we tried got all sad and gray and gloomy. Now that we're in the middle of a re-paint to correct the first painters' horrific job, we're going vivid.

All north facing: MBR is Benjamin Moore's Bermuda Blue, office is Donald Kaufman DKC-20 (a rich gold-nectarine-mustard color), rear parlor is BM Athenian Blue, library is BM My Valentine.

I love BM Bennington Gray in a darker room (it looks greener. I also like hot apple spice in a darker room.

Annab6, I can totally relate to what you're going through. I have a north facing living room that opens to a south facing dining room and have been having similar issues. I had the north LR painted Wilmington Tan but found it too dark and cave like. When looking for a new paint color, I must have sampled 15 different beiges, golds and tans. I just painted the living room BM Papaya last weekend and I think I'm going to like it. I'll know better once I get everything back in the room. It seems like it stays pretty neutral in my limited daylight and lamp light, especially with the GE Reveal bulbs. I like to change out accessories with the seasons, so I wanted a neutral backdrop. If you're going light and want to stay neutral, you might want to give the Papaya a look.

Cheryll: Do you see any undertones in BM Papaya?? It looks like a pretty color and could possibly work in my north facing living room. Any pictures???? Sorry to hyjack this thread.

My FR has 2 north facing windows and 1 west facing window. I am looking at warmer colors vs. cool to warm and brighten the room as it is usually dark in there. There are basically two color theories for north facing rooms that I have read about. One that you go with the cooler/grayer colors and embrace the cave like feel and many people like this or you go with a lighter warmer gold/yellow toned color and warm the room up with brighter accents. I think it depends on how you want to feel in the room. Yellows and golds in southern light tends to be too bright and the grays do wonderful in those rooms.

I think it depends on what part of the country you live in, as well. North light in Missouri is a lot different than north light on the gulf coast of Texas. I loved saturated colors for my rooms in MO, but they looked harsh in this house's living room. Not even remotely the comforting feeling I was used to.

I went with a medium grey tone in my living room that has all the windows facing north. It gave me the serene feeling I was looking for and is a nice backdrop for my warm toned accessories.
I'm still surprised at how many sample quarts of color I went through to arrive at my simple grey.

It all really seems to boil down as your goal for the room. While I embrace deep rich colors in the rest of the house, I have twice used a palest pale pink in 2 different homes in our north facing livingrooms. I could not tell you the color, but one of formulas was a white base with 1 oz magenta in the whole gallon. It looked almost white, until we painted the trim white, then you realized it was colored. This time around I used left over burgundy from the DR, mixed it with white and washed it on. It looks anywhere from white to pink through to lavender in the evening. The irony is that the guys don't seem to mind it. I think it is because there is a lot of wood and the accent color is burgundy, which I use in little touches everywhere. -When you need to, the "masculine males" can be faked out so easily...... ;-)

For me, it would depend what type of room it is. Our NW facing LR is a bronze color as it also doubles as my office. Our DR is a deep blue-grey because I wanted the richness. I love them both! I don't think I'd do these colors in a bedroom, though and they would be too deep for a kitchen area (again, for *me* -- it might be perfect for someone else)!

I don't think we're much help at all on this one!

My great room faces north and west. There are a lot of windows, but since we are in Maine we have a lot of winter months with gray sky. I used California Paint Asian Jute (sort of camel-ish) in there, with a pale buttercream color in the adkoining kitchen. It feels very warm.

I do agree that where you are in the country really affects the lighting. In New England where I live, those gray skies during the cold winter mos can really get depressing, painting a NW room gray up here could exaggerate the grayness. If you are in a sunnier location, gray could look beautiful in a NW exposure. Where are you located?

wow, I really appreciate all of your responses and recommendations. It never occurred to me that the geographical location can play a role, but after you guys said it it makes a lot of sense. We are in Northern NJ.

Sampled more warm grays (Edgecomb Gray and Revere Pewter and two more), but they just don't look right. Even when they are light they appear very dark

I have an additional variable here which is a dark gray/brown fireplace in the middle of the LR. So the brown-grays and some bluish grays work with the stone but not with the lighting. More brighter and cleaner greens/blues work with the lighting but clash with the stone.

The brown part of the stone color is a sandy tone but also slightly peachy, so when I tried real bronze or camel tones (which is where I started) they looked very odd together with the stone. Like a version of a pink and yellow combo. Peach colors go with it but I don't want them.

I actually sampled papaya and dismissed it earlier. But after Cheryll's post I took that poster out and it looks like it could be an option.

Cheryll, did you try Ocean Beach also? I can't tell from the chip what is the difference between the two.

Gagesgranny

When I first put everything back in the room and turned the lamps back on I thought it went too yellow/green and thought that it didn't look at all like my sample board. Then I remembered that I my lightbulbs (Reveal bulbs) in the 2 lamps had both burned out when I was painting and I had replaced them with regular bulbs since they were all I had at the time. After buying new Reveal bulbs and taking out the regular ones, the room was back to the color I was hoping for. I would say that it the color looks like french vanilla ice cream with just a hint of carmel in it. It looked a bit on the peach side as I was painting, but I don't see that at all now that it is up. I seem to be very good at seeing undertones and they will drive me crazy when my husband can't even see it, which is why I have so many sample cans of paint downstairs. With the reveal bulbs, I don't see any yellow, green, or pink. Like I said, just a hint of carmel. If it helps any, we have hardwood floors in a medium brown (Mirage Sierra) tone that maybe has a hint of orange to it and the color works great with the floors. Its quite a light color, but I think it's going to be a great neutral to work with. Our digital camera died so I can't take pictures. So far, I think it's a great color.

Isn't it funny how light bulbs can make such a difference? I'm thinking we're all going to have to repaint when we all switch to flourescents! lol

annab6

I did also get a quart of Ocean Beach because I couldn't see the difference between the two in the fandeck either. Ocean Beach in the can definitely had a bit more of an orange look to it so I was afraid it might go peach in my room. It probably would have been fine in with the regular light bulbs instead of the Reveals ;-)

I had a medium terra cotta color in my last house with two north facing windows and one small west facing one.
My woodwork was stained . It was gorgeous.
I tried the same color in my east facing living room in this house (with painted woodwork) and it looked horrible .

holleygarden, interesting you say that -- I've switched to fluorescents in the majority of the house, which is definitely light-challenged except for the front room, as we're in the PNW and have tall trees around us, and the colors look *fantastic* to us. With the Richmond Gray and 1/2 Pleasant Valley, the room came alive when I put n-vision *bright white* bulbs into all the fixtures except this one track that was here before. Bright white is a good compromise between the n-vision 'warm white' and 'daylight' - and it's like light therapy for us, seriously. I don't know how it would work with reds, but with blue, green, silver, gold, and brown (including the floors and woodwork) in NW facing rooms it's *amazing*. It creates a more open, airy feel vs. a somewhat stifling feel that was coming from the incandescents/halogen bulbs, but still not the harsh light of noon which is what I felt from the 'daylight' bulbs.

I would thus *definitely* encourage you, anna, to get the lighting you're going to have in place before you decide on a paint color.

Holley and flyleft are absolutely right about the fluorescent bulbs and color. My husband put one in the stairwell light going downstairs to the lower level-the lovely butter yellow that is there looks neon yellow with a greenish cast when the light is on now!

Also, remember you need to recycle all fluorescent bulbs as hazardous waste! I have begun using LED lights as much as possible, but those lamps are still so expensive!

I'm stockpiling incandescent bulbs for reasons of both quality of light and that hazardous waste issue; also I like getting a bit of heat from the bulbs. In my son's room, last winter after we switched his north-facing room - with poor air circulation/not the greatest insulation either - to compact fluorescents, we started getting mold on the furniture!

LED might be new technology to which I can adapt, but CFs are not. But even so, I think the poetic simplicity of an incandescent bulb is something worth clinging to.

KarinL

Interesting thread. We are in the middle of the east coast. Our BR is in the NW corner of the house. It was a pale coral with bright white trim. (Furniture is cherry.) The coral really looked like pale pink. This time, we painted it a medium aqua and love it.

Interesting thread! I was going to ask a similar question. Our guest room has only one window that faces west, but does not get a lot of light. Right now it is a light purple, and the paint job by the PO's is bad--clearly they never used painter's tape anywhere. I may be looking to redo it next summer and was already thinking ahead to color ideas.

The front side of my home faces NE, but the morning sun is almost entirely blocked by sun, so those rooms are quite shaded.

This is BM Sabre Gray. It looks quite green on the card in the store, but is a beautiful, dynamic grey-blue-green IRL. It adds richness to woodtones and looks marvelous with white bedding.

I'm also very pleased with SW Accessible Beige in the foyer. It's a pale taupe that isn't cold and looks great with white trim and dark wood.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{!gwi}}

karinL, I absolutely agree about the incandescent bulbs! I love the light they cast. The two LED lamps I bought for my husband's favorite two reading spots have a much colder quality to the light. I am also avoiding CFs.

That Sabre Gray is a beautiful color, happymrsh! Blue-green-gray, colors of the sea, as Sarah Plain and Tall liked :) Going to add it to my list of desired samples...

Thank you for your help everybody, I finally found one color that works in both rooms. It is a BM Gentle Cream which is in the off-white collection. I wanted more color but it looks like with the northern exposure combined with the low ceiling and narrow rooms there is just no visual space for anything more intense. Gentle Cream actually lives up to its name, it doesn't look pink or peach in either room and not too yellow either (Papaya was a little too yellow).

And yes, the type if bulbs makes a big difference. We have some kind of "true light" in the DR, similar to Reveal and this particular color looks more yellow there. The LR has halogen recessed lights and the color has a slight green tint to it in that room.

I also encountered this issue in my kids' bathroom. Picked a countertop which looked beige-cream in the showroom, almost exactly like the color of the tile we selected. I did cheked the sample at home but during the day, the lighting wasn't istalled yet in the bathroom. Once installed, the counter looked almost yellow in the bathroom with the regular flood bulbs. I couldn't believe I was so off with the color! However, after we switched the bulbs to white light it looks a lot closer to what I thought I picked