How to choose the right colour for woodwork

When it comes to painting a room, the walls usually take centre stage, while woodwork is often treated as an afterthought. Yet doors, skirting boards, banisters, window frames and cabinetry can shape the character of a space far more than they’re typically given credit for. With the right choice of colour, these surfaces can bring unexpected harmony, softness or impact to a scheme, enhancing both the interior and the way we experience it.

This isn’t about following rules or chasing trends. It’s about deciding whether you want the woodwork to stand out or quietly recede through the use of colour. We spoke to designers and paint experts to explore how to approach this often-overlooked detail with greater intention.

A good place to begin is by thinking about whether you want the woodwork to match, sit tonally close to, or contrast with the walls. None of these options is inherently right or wrong; it all depends on the atmosphere you want to create and the elements you wish to emphasise.

Painting walls and trim in the same colour often creates a soft, seamless effect, allowing details to blend into the background. A contrasting shade, on the other hand, can frame the space and draw attention to features such as mouldings and doorways. Somewhere in between lies the tonal approach, where a slightly lighter or darker version of the wall colour introduces depth and subtle definition without sharp transitions.

‘A trick I like to use is putting a darker colour on the woodwork than on the walls. One’s eye stops at the lightest thing we see, so if you paint a window frame in a darker colour, your eye is drawn beyond it,’ says Nicola Harding. ‘With this in mind, in a few of my projects, we layered the green tones in the garden room and family room, placing darker shades on the window frames, and it’s magic how it opens the spaces up to the garden.’

Patrick O’Donnell, International Brand Ambassador at Farrow & Ball, similarly encourages flipping convention on its head. ‘People tend to reach for white or neutrals, but darker woodwork with lighter walls can feel overtly modern, framing a space with elegance and subtle impact,’ he says. In smaller rooms, it can even give the illusion of more space. His favourite combinations include “Bamboozle” on trim with the softness of “Setting Plaster”, or “Babouche” with “All White” — ‘a nod to optimistic cheer without overwhelming the room.’

For those seeking a softer, more tonal approach, Ruth Mottershead, Creative Director of Little Greene, suggests building contrast through depth rather than difference. ‘Skirting boards are painted a neutral or white shade out of habit, but their proportion makes them the perfect opportunity to add a little colour,’ she says. A deeper strength of the same pigment on the trim can bring definition without sharp edges. ‘Combine colours from the same colour scale families for a balanced finish. For example, use “Dorchester Pink Deep” on woodwork with “Dorchester Pink” on the walls.’

The idea of using painted woodwork to bring structure or harmony to a room is hardly new. In Georgian interiors, panelling and shutters were often finished in muted shades such as stone, sage or grey-blue to echo the palette of the walls and complement the classical proportions of the architecture.

Victorians took a different approach, favouring rich, saturated tones such as burgundy, dark green and maroon, especially in dining rooms and libraries where texture and depth played a greater role. Lighter colours, however, remained common in more private rooms — bedrooms, parlours and dressing areas — where calm and simplicity were preferred.

While we enjoy far greater freedom today, many of the same considerations still apply. Chief among them is how the surface itself can alter the way colour is perceived. The same paint may appear warmer or cooler, deeper or flatter, depending on the material beneath it and how the light moves through the space.

With these shifts in mind, Beata Heuman developed several shades in her “Dependables” collection for Mylands specifically with woodwork in mind, treating it as a way to set the tone of a room. ‘It depends if you want to make the woodwork a feature, or have it become part of the canvas on which you’re building the room,’ she says. ‘We sometimes like to keep it neutral but pull out an element to paint in a contrasting colour.’

Heuman continues, ‘In smaller spaces, sometimes we’ve felt it right to paint all the woodwork in a brighter tone. In situations like this, even when using a colour which seems bright on the colour card, because there’s proportionally more of it, the shade becomes more of a ground colour on which everything else sits.’ At her showroom at 188 Hammersmith Road, the warm neutral “Cigar” was conceived as a graphic alternative to timber and applied to the staircase to evoke the effect of panelling where none exists.

However you approach it, painting the woodwork is about bringing the room into focus. It might seem like a minor choice, but it can shift the balance of a space in ways you don’t quite expect.