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Sellers: Before your home hits the MLS, pay a visit to your local paint store. Turns out, the colors in your home can affect the offer price. And before you scoop up gallons of Sherwin-Williams’s Alabaster, know that all-white walls aren’t even a safe bet anymore.
Zillow’s 2026 Paint Color Analysis breaks down exactly what shades to embrace (and where), based on findings from a survey of 4,400 recent and prospective home buyers. Painting a white bedroom chocolate brown, for instance, can add $2,277 to a home’s offer price. In a living room, pale blue could score you $1,723 more than if it were white. Those numbers might sound trivial in the grand scheme of things, but there is one costly paint mistake the real-estate platform suggests avoiding: swathing everything in ochre yellow. When used in the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom, the deep yellow-brown shade can shave an estimated $18,164 off a listing’s offer price.
Writing off any color makes us sad, but especially this one. Because our experience with ochre has taught us that you can totally use the hue in big doses, as long as you play up its earthy, retro tendencies. Here are six reminders to go ahead and risk it.
Forget You’re in a Cramped, Narrow Kitchen
According to Zillow’s research, an ochre yellow kitchen alone could reduce offers by $6,630. But based on Minna founder Sara Berks’s space in the Hudson Valley, we have to assume that excludes quirky, narrow, farmhouse kitchens. Here, golden yellow cabinets lend a sunny disposition to an awkward, L-shape layout.
Hop across the pond and you’ll find Farrow & Ball’s Sudbury Yellow creating a similar cozy feeling in a cottage in Hampshire, England, featured in Life Inside a Cottage by Nell Card and Rachel Vere.
Make a Moody Lounge
For designer Robert McKinley, ochre was a fitting choice for this Hamptons home because it reminded him of Montauk’s sandy cliffs. The muddy limewash finish from Domingue, called Giza, gives the room a cocooning quality.
Recreate Cotswolds Charm in a Bedroom
Jordan Slocum and Barry Bordelon landed on Farrow & Ball’s Duster yellow for their Brooklyn brownstone bedroom after spotting the hue during their travels to the English countryside.
Warm Up the Living Room
More proof the Brits love ochre: This cozy living room by U.K. firm Golden where the walls and built-ins are drenched in ochre and the furniture and lighting also give off a warm glow.
Go Beyond Paint in the Powder Room
There’s a lick of golden pain on the ceiling of this Brooklyn bathroom by Dunham Robinson, but ochre mainly plays out in the form of a garden-inspired wallpaper and Zia Tile’s Amber squares.
Balance Old and New in the Mudroom
Ochre yellow isn’t just for ancient farmhouses or sweet, old Victorians. In this mid-century Austin home, a collaboration between architect Sarah Bullock McIntyre and designer Ann Edgerton, the color looks just as good on modern flat-slab cabinet doors as it does classic tongue-and-groove wall paneling.