How to Choose Colours by Room Direction

Daylight is not neutral. It carries its own colour temperature, and that temperature can shift depending on where the sun sits in relation to your windows.

A north-facing room receives very little direct sunlight. The light it gets is indirect and remarkably consistent, with a cooler, slightly blue cast that holds steady from morning through to evening. A south-facing room gets the opposite: direct sun for most of the day, stronger in intensity and warmer in tone.

East and west-facing rooms sit between the two, but at opposite ends of the day. An east-facing room is bright and clear first thing, then settles into cooler, softer light by mid-afternoon. Whereas a west-facing room begins the day cool, warming considerably as the sun drops.

Product featured: Roger Red Paint. Credit: @reanne.witter

Stand with your back to a wall opposite your main window, facing toward the glass, and open the compass app on your phone. The direction it reads is your room’s aspect.

You can also just watch the room instead. Note where the sun falls at nine in the morning, at midday, and at five in the afternoon. A room that is bright first thing and quiet later faces east. A room that comes into its own in the evening faces west. A room with even, steady light all day and no direct sun faces north.

Do this room by room. Aspect changes across a house, and a colour that settles beautifully in one space can behave quite differently three doors down.

Products featured: Esther Stone Wallpaper & Reecho Neutral Curtains.

North-facing rooms receive the coolest and most consistent light in the house. It arrives steady and even, with a cool cast that stays put all day, which gives the colours you choose a real opportunity to bring warmth to the room.

The instinct is often to go paler here, in the hope of borrowing more light. Warmth tends to be the more rewarding route. Shades built on yellow, red, or brown undertones glow from within and hold that richness even where the light stays low and indirect.

Products used: Shadow Play Clay Wallpaper & Hot Mocha Paint. Credit: @dulciebuttons. 

South-facing rooms are the most generous in the house, and the most forgiving. Almost anything works in them, which makes it well worth being deliberate about what you choose.

Strong, direct sun warms everything it falls on, drawing creams towards yellow and lifting warm neutrals brighter as the afternoon goes on. Cool undertones balance that intensity beautifully, holding their character right through the day.

Product featured: Watery Lane Linen Wallpaper

When it comes to bringing comfort to a room. Colour is only half of it. Texture and sheen respond to directional light just as much as pigment does.

A wallpaper with a raised or woven texture shows its relief most clearly where light rakes across the wall at an angle. The same design can look noticeably richer on a side wall in a west-facing room than it does flat-on in a north-facing one, without a single thing changing about the paper itself.

Metallic and lustre finishes are more particular still. Our mica fibrous mural paper carries an all-over lustre that shimmers beautifully when the light catches it, earning its keep in a room with direct sun to work with. In a north-facing room with steady, indirect light, a matt or fibrous finish will often give a truer read of the design.

Paint sheen levels also change with lighting. Our most-popular ultra flat matt resistance finish absorbs light and diffuses it, softening glare and is a real asset in any room. Whilst more sheen and eggshell finishes can reflect light back into a space, adding brightness. Learn more about the right paint finish for your room on our paint finishes page.

Products featured: Boreas Breathe Wallpaper & Breathe Paint. 

Samples are the surest way to see how a colour will behave in your own light. Nothing tells you more than the wall itself.

Order samples, and view them properly. Tape them to the wall rather than laying them flat, because colour reads differently on the horizontal. Look at them in the morning, in the middle of the day, and after dark under artificial light. Move them between walls in the same room too — a wall facing the window and a wall beside it will never look the same.

With murals this matters more still, as each one is printed to your exact measurements. Our mural sample packs include the same design across all four paper substrates, so you can hang them side by side on the wall you have in mind and see which finish suits your light before anything is printed at full scale. Our sample service covers paint, wallpaper and murals.

If you would like a second opinion before you commit, our design and colour consultation service pairs you with someone who does this every day.