The best green paint colors, in real rooms

The usual best-green list is a row of chips. This one is built from photographs: each color has at least three published rooms on this site, every one credited to the studio that painted it. Fourteen greens clear that bar; we capped the list at twelve and left out Portola's Rococo and Edward Bulmer's Olympian Green, which have their own pages. The order follows how many rooms we have, not how many gallons the brands sell, so Calke Green leads with 12, then Nantucket Gray with 9, then Grasshopper and Sweet Tea with 7 each.

That rule produces a list with gaps, and we would rather say so than fill them. Benjamin Moore's October Mist and Sherwin-Williams' Evergreen Fog, both named color of the year for 2022, are not here because we have not yet published a credited room in either. Farrow & Ball's Studio Green is missing for the same reason, and Green Smoke has only one published room so far. When the rooms arrive, the list changes.

What the twelve do cover is the whole range of the family: two pale silvery greens, three sages, a clear yellow-green, a gray-green, a lime-wash sage, two deep greens and two olives dark enough to work as neutrals.

The names overlap and the brands do not use them consistently, so it helps to know what people mean. Farrow & Ball's Patrick O'Donnell, quoted in Homes & Gardens: 'Sage greens are part of the most natural of all the color families due to their aged, earth-toned appearance.' Designer Rachel Robinson of Dunham Robinson, in Livingetc, draws the line between sage and olive: 'Where sage is about light, olive is about warmth as there's yellow in it, which makes the color feel lit from within.' Liz Goldberg of CAROLYNLEONA: 'Olive green has hints of yellow and brown to make it just off, in the right way, from a true green paint.'

On this list the sages are Nantucket Gray, Cedar Grove, Sweet Tea and, at the pale end, Pine Frost and Window Pane. The olives are Aegean Olive and Benjamin Moore's Sage 2143-10, which despite its name the brand describes as 'a dark olive hue.' The deep greens are Duck Green and, at the sage end of deep, Calke Green, which Farrow & Ball itself calls 'a rich and traditional sage green.' Creekside Green is the gray-green, 'a dark gray' with 'hazy green tones' in Benjamin Moore's words. Grasshopper is the one clear green, a yellow-green with nothing muted about it. Sea Salt sits on the border with blue.

Which family to choose comes down to what you want the room to do. Greg Daulby of Cor Domi, in Livingetc: 'Sage isn't going anywhere, but olive feels like where the more interesting design conversations are happening right now.' Sage recedes and lets the furniture talk; olive and the deep greens hold the room.

Light reflectance value runs from 0 to 100, and on greens the spread is enormous. Window Pane at 72.24 and Pine Frost at 65.148 reflect most of the light that hits them and read as tinted whites in a bright room. Sea Salt at 63.233 and Grasshopper at 52.14 are light colors that are still plainly colors. Cedar Grove at 46.34 and Nantucket Gray at 39.83 are the mid-tones, the band where a green holds its color in daylight without going heavy at night. Creekside Green at 31.43 is dark. Sage at 15.31 and Aegean Olive at 11.54 are as dark as most people will paint a whole room; at that depth they stop behaving like greens and start behaving like browns and charcoals.

Farrow & Ball does not publish LRVs on its color pages, so Calke Green and Duck Green have none here. Portola does not list an LRV for Sweet Tea on the sources we used, and lime wash varies from wall to wall, so a single number would mislead anyway.

LRV measures brightness only. Two greens at the same LRV can read completely differently depending on how much yellow, blue or gray is in them, which is the family question above.

Green moves with the light more than most colors, and the designers are consistent about which way. Victoria Holly of Victoria Holly Interiors, in Livingetc: 'North-facing rooms receive cooler and more diffused light, so your green will appear darker and more muted,' while 'for south-facing rooms, with warm consistent sunlight, green shades will appear more saturated.' Trina Rogers of Five Star Painting adds the trap: 'in a north-facing room with minimal lighting, cooler greens can reveal more of their blue undertones.' Her fix: 'Greens with warm yellow undertones can balance out the coolness of a north-facing room.'

In practice, north-facing: the yellow-based greens, Nantucket Gray, Grasshopper, Cedar Grove and Calke Green, and the warm olives. The pale, cool ones, Sea Salt, Window Pane and Pine Frost, are the ones that can flash blue there. South-facing: almost anything, with the caveat that a clear green like Grasshopper will be brighter than its chip. The deep greens and olives are the least light-dependent of all; as Behr's Kayla Kratz puts it in Apartment Therapy, 'a dark green can work with the shadows rather than trying to erase them.'

The same article has the rule for every green: 'A good green should not look exactly the same from breakfast to dinner.' Sample large, in the room, and look at it at night under your own bulbs.

Green cabinets are where this family has moved fastest. Julia Mack of Julia Mack Design, in Livingetc: 'Think of dark green when considering color for kitchen cabinets instead of the standard white paint or wood tone.' Donna DuFresne, in the same piece: 'I love the organic feel of a green kitchen, as it just reads heart and home.' The split between sage and olive runs through cabinets too. David Quarles IV, in Apartment Therapy: 'For a kitchen that feels light and airy, I love to opt for sage-toned greens for the cabinets.' Caroline Kopp: 'Olive greens are a favorite of mine because they have that warmth and depth that straight green does not have.'

Our own kitchens are the evidence. Nantucket Gray in the Julia Chasman kitchen, nine frames of it, is the sage case. Calke Green in the Centered by Design kitchen is the deep-green case. Aegean Olive has not been photographed on cabinets here yet, but Sara Swabb's recommendation in Real Simple, 'a beautiful option for cabinetry when you want color that feels grounded and lived-in,' is the olive case.

The white decides whether a green looks fresh or dirty. Benjamin Moore's Arianna Barone: 'Our top tip for choosing white trim paint is to align with the same undertone as your wall,' and the brand's rule for cool walls is plain: 'If your walls are a cooler color—blue, green, or purple—stick with a crisp white hue.' Sherwin-Williams' Joe Rich gives the two directions: 'Warm whites have a gentle, softening effect' and 'Cooler whites on trim tend to bring more contrast.'

So: the cool pale greens, Sea Salt, Window Pane, Pine Frost, want a clean white trim, Pure White or Chantilly Lace. The yellow-based sages and olives can take a warm white, White Dove or Swiss Coffee, without looking dingy. Farrow & Ball's own advice for Calke Green is to use it 'either on its own on both walls and woodwork' or 'with a darker neutral like Old White to enhance its deep sage notes,' and its complementary white for the color is Slipper Satin. For Duck Green the brand suggests Ash Grey as the white and 'a warm and welcoming pair with Deep Reddish Brown on woodwork.' Benjamin Moore's coordinating whites are Creamy White for Nantucket Gray, Cloud White for Grasshopper, Cedar Grove and Sage, and White Dove for Sage.

If green is only on the island or a run of accent cabinets, Jenna Schnabel Wedemeyer of Schnabel Interiors, in Apartment Therapy, keeps the rest soft: 'we are fans of taupey-whites for the majority of cabinetry.'

Ruth Mottershead of Little Greene, in Homes & Gardens: 'Greens are often relatively neutral. They are neither too warm nor too cool.' Victoria Holly: 'Green is absolutely becoming a new neutral.' Dan Mazzarini of BHDM Design: 'It's a great biophilic color that I like to use more like a neutral in the way you would denim.' Sasha Basso of Capiz Studio, on sage: 'It's one of those colors that can act as a neutral.'

The brands agree. Sherwin-Williams made Evergreen Fog its 2022 color of the year, 'a versatile and calming hue, a chameleon color of gorgeous green-meets-gray, with just a bit of blue,' and Benjamin Moore chose October Mist the same year, 'an organic hue with metallic undertones reminiscent of the silver-sage green stem of a flower' as Homes & Gardens described it. Sherwin-Williams' Emily Kantz, on what is replacing gray in 2026: 'Green-leaning beiges, soft greiges, putty tones, and creamy whites are all gaining momentum.' Four of the colors on this list, Nantucket Gray, Aegean Olive, Creekside Green and Benjamin Moore's Sage, are filed by their maker as neutrals, not greens.

The instinct is to keep a small room pale. The designers mostly disagree. Susie Pfeiffer, in Livingetc, on Calke Green: 'Although painting a small room in a dark color can seem counterintuitive, this shade of green works differently.' She describes it as sitting 'somewhere between soft sage and forest green, offering the perfect balance between warmth and depth,' and 'both timeless and of the moment.' Jenny Luck of Jenny Luck Interiors: 'greens are naturally inviting and always look comfortable in a darker setting.' Designer Orlando Soria, on his own dark green bedroom: 'The paint color allowed me to give the room a strong perspective given the space restraints.'

On this list the candidates are Duck Green, Aegean Olive, Sage and Creekside Green, and our rooms back the designers: Duck Green in the Studio Nauleau bedrooms, Aegean Olive in the Fisher entryway and hallway, Creekside Green in the Blanc Marine bathroom. The trick is to paint everything, walls, trim, sometimes ceiling, so there is no white edge to show how dark the walls are. Sample two large boards, move them around the room, and check them at night before you commit.