Zillow Says This One Paint Color Could Add Over $2,000 to Your Home’s Value
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Color makes a big impact on your space—how cozy or cold it seems; cheerful or dreary; stylish or dated. It subtly affects how others interpret your home’s general style and design, and in turn, its value on the market. The experts at Zillow understand how powerful color is, so they did some digging and are now releasing their 2026 Paint Color Analysis. It covers all types of helpful info, including what they found interesting overall, which colors were the best and worst for homeowners, and why painting your rooms specific hues can have such a big influence on your house’s market value.
Overall, Zillow’s 2026 Paint Analysis discovered that warmer, earth-toned colors and rich, neutral paints made a positive influence in a home’s potential price, with shades like chocolate brown, sage green, and charcoal gray leading the pack. At the same time, they also found that one popular color can shave a whopping $18,000 off a home’s value. Explore their paint color insights below, along with savvy tips to help you optimize your home listing.
How the Zillow Paint Color Analysis Works
Each year, Zillow conducts this analysis, where their behavioral science team surveys thousands of recent and prospective home buyers around the country. These buyers are randomly shown images of home interiors, each painted in one of 11 different colors. Each color gets a score based on the following parameters: how much the buyers like the home, how interested they are in buying it, how likely they are to tour it, and the price they’d be willing to pay for it. Afterwards, these findings are analyzed and broken out into specific numerical findings and insights, which Zillow brings to you in their final report.
Zillow 2026 Paint Color Analysis Findings
- Warm chocolate brown bedrooms can add $2,277 to a home’s value
- Sage green ranks in the top tier for every room and is the safest bet for maximizing value
- Ochre yellow can reduce a home’s value by $18,164
According to Zillow, chocolate brown bedrooms can add a whopping $2,277 to your home’s offer price—the highest-value color in this year’s analysis. Their findings show that more and more home buyers are looking for rich, warm colors inside their homes, as opposed to stark all-white walls. Inside living rooms, home buyers valued pale blue $1,723 more than white. Charcoal gray was valued $1,509 more in living rooms and $1,240 more in bedrooms, and painting a bedroom sage green rather than white can add $1,035.
“White will always be a timeless, versatile choice, but sellers who default to all-white walls everywhere may be leaving money on the table,” says Amanda Pendleton, Zillow’s home trends expert. “Buyers today respond to homes with soul, and paint is one of the easiest, most affordable ways to add personality and character to a space. The right colors can stop a shopper mid-scroll and instantly create an emotional connection, which ultimately drives higher offers. If a seller were to repaint the top performing color in each room, they could add more than $5,000 to their bottom line.”
If you do want to repaint but you’re only able to tackle one area, there’s a clear answer on which to go with: the kitchen. The data from the Zillow Color Analysis claims the range between the best and worst paint colors in a cooking space is almost $8,000, making it the true VIP—Very Important Paint room.
Why Certain Colors Add or Subtract Value
Overall Design
Your home’s design is more than just its style or architectural type. Your interior colors have the ability to make your space as a whole feel dated, trendy, bland, flashy, and more. How cohesive your home’s design looks, and how comfortable your home is to be in, will be impactful to its value.
Buyer Psychology
When looking for a home, most buyers want to be able to picture themselves actually living in the space. With bright, bold hues and jarring colors, it can be more difficult. Color can demand attention—or it can act as a canvas for buyers to reimagine their life inside the home. A traditional-style room painted a deep sage green and a modern-style home painted in fire engine red will illicit different responses in potential buyers.
What Does This Mean for Homeowners?
Don’t head off to the hardware store for paint rollers and gallon cans just yet. Before making any changes to your space—even if you do have one of the less desirable colors—homeowners should consult with a trusted real estate agent first and foremost. With their advice, you’ll get insight into what buyers are looking for in your specific neighborhood, and any unique circumstances that you may be under. Paint is only the beginning—but style, design details, and architecture type will play a huge role into how these colors are interpreted in your unique property.
In an interview with Zillow, Emily Kantz, Color Marketing Manager & Trendsight Team member at Sherwin-Williams, says, “If an ochre yellow kitchen brings you joy, embrace it! There will be some buyers who will love your yellow kitchen as much as you do. But getting top dollar for your home is all about appealing to the most potential buyers.” When it’s time to sell, consult a real estate expert. Get their opinion, and see if repainting might be the better move for you financially.
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Bree Pulver O'Hagan
Bree is the Senior Digital Editor at DrewandJonathan.com. In the past, she’s worked for publications focused on home improvement and sustainable living. Bree’s Pinterest board is filled with cozy textures; vintage patterns; sculptural furniture; and moody, warm-toned colors. She has a degree concentrated in the intersection of writing and architecture, which influences her passion for exploring creative solutions to unusual home layouts and stylish renter-friendly decor. She’s a self-proclaimed pro at finding the best antique furniture in the most unlikely of places (but her cat Blue can certainly back these claims).
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