The paint brands picked their 2026 colors of the year, and almost every one of them moved away from cool grays toward something grounded: khaki, espresso, soft greens and warm reds.

If you are ready to put color on the walls, see our interior painting work.

Southern Living's 2026 Idea House in Fredericksburg, Texas keeps most of its walls white, then wraps an entire bedroom in green scenic wallpaper, down to a chair upholstered to match. It is the clearest version of a trend running through all the October issues: keep the house calm, and let one room be bold.

Powder rooms, dining rooms and guest rooms are the easiest places to do it. They are small enough to paper in a day or two, and they are the rooms guests see most.

These are rooms our crews papered. See more on our wallpaper installation page.

Not ready to paper a whole room? An accent wall gets the same effect with paint, on one wall.

Country Living's fall issue is full of plate racks and open shelves for ironstone, spongeware and transferware. The idea is to live with the things you collect instead of storing them.

The shelves behind the collection matter as much as what sits on them. A painted built-in, especially in a deep color, makes white china and old pottery stand out.

Save the Bancha built-ins on Pinterest

We paint built-ins, shelving and cabinets. See our cabinet and built-in painting.

That Country Living cover line sums up the season. The rooms in this fall's magazines are layered and warm, built for people to sit in for an evening rather than to photograph. House Beautiful's 130th-anniversary issue makes the same point from the other direction, with a feature on the art of hosting.

Better Homes & Gardens' October issue features prints hung in tight, even grids as the focal point of a room. Compared with a loose salon-style wall, a grid looks calmer and more deliberate, and it puts the wall color behind the frames front and center.

Better Homes & Gardens also visits a Georgian house in London decorated in reds, blues and yellows, with the edges softened so the colors feel rich instead of loud. Glidden's 2026 pick, Warm Mahogany, comes from the same instinct.

Two colors on this list are ours. Southern Living recently named Southern places that have paint colors of their own, and Jekyll Island made it: Valspar's Champagne Toast was blended to reflect the historic color of the Jekyll Island Club.

The other is haint blue, the pale blue-green on the ceilings of so many porches here. The tradition comes from the Gullah Geechee people of the Sea Islands: haints, or restless spirits, were said to be unable to cross water, so a ceiling the color of water kept them off the porch. There is no single haint blue. These six are the shades named most often.

Save these haint blue colors on Pinterest

Screen colors are approximate. Test a sample on the surface itself.

Porch ceilings, floors and decks are some of the quickest exterior projects we do. See our porch and deck work, or our painting on Jekyll Island.