Adding Blue to Your Walls Puts Green In Your Pocket When It’s Time to Sell

Ka-ching! | Public domain image from Pixabay.com

Want buyers to appreciate your home even more?

Add a pop of color to your rooms and watch its value appreciate.

New research conducted by Zillow finds that buyers will shell out a little more for rooms painted in cool, neutral colors.

Especially blue. Kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms done in shades of blue ranging from a light grayish-blue to cerulean, periwinkle, or even a navy blue dining room with white shiplap trim, boosted the sale price of homes anywhere fron $1,809 to $5,440 on average.

Buyers in Philadelphia are especially likely to find homes with blue to bluish-purple bathrooms, which tacked an average of $5,440 onto the sale price, and bedrooms in light to medium shades of blue, which added $1,856.

Other value-boosting color and room combinations included light earth tones like beige, pale taupe or oatmeal in the living room and “griege,” a mix of gray and beige, on the exterior.

“Colors from nature work well” in enhancing the attractiveness of a space, said Kerrie Kelly, a Sacramento interior designer who is Zillow’s national design spokesperson. “Blue, with its attachment to the sky and the sea, is a color that complements multiple styles.

“Painting homes in distinctive colors also shows that the owners have taken care of their homes, and that allows them to capture more value from buyers.”

As for the popularity of blue rooms in this region, Kelly said, “Philadelphia is a city with lots of younger homeowners flocking in from other places. They’re looking for a cleaner, more neutral color palette that can work with multiple styles. Blue gives personality compared to those creamy white walls.”

In fact, Zillow’s research found that white or off-white walls can detract from a home’s value. A bathroom done in those colors, for instance, knocked an average $4,035 off a home’s value. Pinks and reds in bedrooms and dining rooms also proved to be downers – parents, please consider redoing your darling daughter’s bedroom if you painted it pink – as did brown or taupe exteriors. Yellow or marigold kitchens may have brightened the moods of their owners, but they took an average of $820 out of their pockets at sale time.

“When you get super-specific, using tones like terra cotta that can’t translate among styles or white walls that look like you’ve done nothing, you can get up to $4,000 less in value than with the blue walls we’re talking about,” Kelly said.

“Blue is the new neutral. It gives a room a kick of personality, and I think buyers are responding to it.”