A balanced and subtle Scandinavian interior design

Light gray paint colors can be a great substitution for white walls. Using classic gray paint is a great way to add depth and character to a Scandinavian interior design. Light grey will reflect the daylight in a similar way white walls do, which is great for living spaces that don’t get a bunch of natural light.

If you are looking for a similar light grey shade for your walls I suggest you try out Ammonite* , Cornforth white*, or Dimpse* from Farrow & Ball, but I elaborate more on that down below.

Light grey walls in the living room

The warm gray of the walls goes beautifully with the warm tone of the elaborate rattan lounge chairs next to the sofa. Those chairs are true eye-catchers on the white fluffy area rug and the warm gray comes back in a darker tone on the vintage mirror cabinet, which has green undertones. The mirror on the cabinet door reflects the daylight coming in from the windows, which is a great Scandinavian design trick for creating more natural light in your home.

The chairs and the vintage piece make for a great mixture of interior design styles in the living space and the green undertone of the cabinet is enhanced beautifully by the green plants in the living room. The classic gray of the walls combined with the different elements in the interior, the white of the window moldings, and the white-washed wooden flooring have a sophisticated effect in this light-flooded living space.

Light grey walls in the bedroom

Scandinavian interiors usually have a neutral color scheme, especially when gray paint is used on the walls. The light gray wall color in this bedroom is enhanced by a mixture of warm textiles and throw pillows on the bed and a set of beautiful brass wall lamps to add a point of interest to this Scandinavian style minimalist setting.

Even though it seems like the same gray paint was used both in the living room and bedroom, the natural light and the textiles make the gray paint color in the bedroom seem slightly warmer. The wood tones of the wing doors between the bedroom and living space add another beautiful warm element to the room.

via Alvhem

What light gray paint colors are best for your walls?

When it comes to picking out the right gray paint colors for your space, you should first analyze the main influencing factors in the room and in the wall colors. A Scandinavian interior design usually starts out from a neutral color scheme anyways, which makes it easier to pick out a grey color for your interior.

The darkness of your gray walls depends mostly on your personal preference and your lighting conditions. While a light grey will reflect the light similarly to the way white walls do, dark grey walls will have a characterful effect (see a great example here,and here). Note that darker colors will typically make a room look smaller, so a small space might benefit from a light gray paint color.

From which direction is the natural light hitting the room?

North-facing rooms tend to expose cool undertones in the paint, which is why it makes sense to pick a warmer grey paint color. South-facing rooms on the other hand can benefit from cooler grey walls.

What’s the element with the lightest color in the room?

One of the reasons the light grey walls work so nicely in this apartment is because the window and door frames are painted white, making them pop out of the wall color. Do you have Scandinavian interior elements in your space that you want to highlight in a similar way? Then pick out a light gray paint, it will make the white moldings stand out in a beautiful and crisp way.

Light gray paint colors that fit with a Scandinavian interior design

Farrow & Ball Ammonite* is a subtle light grey that is neither too warm or cool and it tends to add a calming feel to your home.

Farrow & Ball Cornforth White* is even a bit lighter and thus even more subtle as Ammonite, yet has the same calming effect, just more subtle.

Farrow & Ball Dimpse* has subtle blue undertones which is a great subtle tone for a room that gets a lot of warm daylight and would benefit from a cooler tone.

This beautiful Scandinavian interior has grey walls throughout, which gives the space a very soft look that is enhanced by the light wooden flooring and the natural colors in the furniture and accessories. The bedroom and living room have both been painted in a different shade of grey, each combined with a different selection of furniture and accessories either contrasting or complementing the color on the wall perfectly.

How to make grey walls work in your nordic interior

A grey wall color works great in Scandinavian interior design, as it complements the light flooring that is so characteristic in a nordic interior. While a dark grey wall like in this beautiful apartment can have a very characterful effect, a lighter grey wall color like in this interior makes the rooms look brighter and more spacious.

You can go with a cool, warm, or mid-grey tone for your walls, depending on the light that hits the room, the furniture you already own, and your personal preference. Below I give some suggestions for wall colors, but keep in mind this is very subjective, and the way wall colors look can differ from room to room.

Grey living room walls combined with a blue sofa and natural elements

You might notice that in the living room the light grey walls are a little warmer, which makes the contrast with the blueish-grey sofa even more apparent. This blue element really stands out in this interior and gives it a fresh touch.

Black accents like the FLOS 265 wall lamp* and the black rattan sideboard add a lovely contrast to this otherwise light palette and the natural wood of the Herman dining chairs by Ferm Living* combined with the cork cabinet add a warm element in the dining area, which is reflected in the asymmetric mirror on the wall.

Grey bedroom walls combined with beige textiles

The cooler grey wall paint in the bedroom forms the perfect base for this cozy bedroom. The grey wall color is matched with grey linen curtains* and a grey fabric lamp, while the rest of the accessories are warming up the room. The dark beige duvet cover* combined with the beige and white textiles on the bed and the beige art prints on the wall cause a lovely play between warm and cool, which has been finished off with black accent pieces in the floor lamp and bedside tables. The custom-built wardrobe has an off-white paint color, which matches the color of the doorframes. 

While in the living room, your eye goes straight to the blue-ish grey sofa, here the attention goes to the beige bedding, as those are the elements that contrast most with the cooler wall color.

Which grey wall paint do you pick to achieve this look?

While it is hard to tell the exact color that the decorator has used in this apartment, you might want to try out a mid-grey tone if you are looking to achieve the color in the living room. Farrow & Ball Worsted*, or Purbeck stone* for a lighter grey might work well with the furniture in the living room. The grey wall paint in the bedroom looks cooler, but not blue, so a cooler grey like ‘Lamp room grey’* might be worth a try. 

When it comes to picking out a grey wall color, you need to refrain from going too extreme on the warm-cool scale, as the paint color can easily turn out more beige or blue depending on the light in the room. When you buy paint, always buy a sample first*, as natural light in the room influences how the color will work in the room. North-facing rooms will have a cooler light coming in for example, so it’s always important to test, test, and test. 

Styled by Grey Deco for Alvhem

The Jotun Lady color chart is always a great source of subtle wall colors for the Scandinavian home. I often get emails with questions about the wall colors in the interior inspirations I post here on the blog and I’m always happy to point to the Jotun colors for inspiration. The brand recently released the styled images of their new color chart and they are absolutely amazing, just like every single year. These inspirations make me want to paint every single room in my apartment.

Newly built homes are always a bit more of a challenge to make cozy and inviting, but this modern loft interior in a newly built Swedish building shows us that it can be done. The loft apartment has a modern interior with a beautiful dark grey kitchen, black accent pieces, and these gorgeous black metal window frames that let in an abundance of daylight.

What makes this loft interior so unique?

Black accent pieces match the black metal window frames

Loft-style apartments typically have windows just like in this interior, which makes living in a loft so comfortable. To not let the black of the windows stand out too much, many black pieces were added to this Scandinavian interior, the impressive black artwork above the white sofa being the true eye-catcher in this industrial loft apartment.

While the black furniture pieces and objects finish everything off, the rest of the furniture pieces have been picked in light and natural colors, enhancing the natural wood flooring. It’s this natural palette that forms the basis for the black accent interior design and keeps everything balanced.

A kitchen with dark grey cabinets and a marble countertop

The dark grey kitchen cabinets in combination with the grey marble kitchen countertop and the subtle chrome door handles fit this loft apartment perfectly. The kitchen shares a space with the living and dining room and by keeping the cabinets low in the living area, the layout of the kitchen looks very spacious. The owners picked a white exhaust cover that blends into the wall, making the kitchen design more bottom-heavy and thus lighter-looking.

The hallway flows over into the kitchen as well, and on this side, higher cupboards are used to optimize storage space. I imagine this would be a shared storage area for kitchen and hallway items. The natural stone countertop visually separates the dark grey kitchen cabinets from the white walls and adds a lovely natural texture to the look.

In this beautiful loft, a grey kitchen was built with upper cabinets, making use of the high ceilings in the space, but in a lower-ceiling apartment, it’s better to adhere to a bottom-heavy setup.

The grey wardrobe in the same material as the kitchen cabinets

While the general color palette of the bedroom is a lot lighter, with a greige wall color, the grey wardrobe cabinets add some contrast to this room. The door handles are from the same range as the ones in the kitchen as well, tying the design together.

The living space with the kitchen and the other rooms in this modern interior design has been designed with an eye for detail and in a modest Scandinavian style, that enhances the base features of this modern industrial building.

via Historiska Hem

An open-plan apartment can enlarge smaller floorplans and natural light can flow freely into each space without obstructing it. There are some obvious disadvantages of connected rooms, however, I find a glass partition a perfect solution to combine the best of both worlds.

Create a division with a glass partition wall

The glass allows the natural light to flow into the open spaces, yet the door can be closed to separate the rooms in a high-quality fashion without having to build a solid wall that makes the space look smaller. You can even place a curtain behind the glass which can be closed for complete privacy when necessary and the glass divider wall will also offer sound insulation in case you need it. You can see a beautiful example of a curtain behind a glass partition in this bedroom I wrote about a while back.

If you live in a small studio apartment and are looking for some inspiration on how to visually divide the functional areas, have a look at this post where you can see some beautiful studio apartment examples with creative separators. Check out this blog post if you want to see more applications of glass partitions and glass room dividers in different apartments small and big.

Other room divider ideas and ways to visually separate the different functionalities in the apartment

Different shades of Grey walls for a calm and serene look

I think the interior design in this Scandinavian apartment is relatively modest, yet the warm gray walls in combination with the light fabrics and furniture look very calming and serene to me. The black metal frame around the glass partition adds a lovely texture and contrast to the space and I love the way it frames the bedroom when looking in from the living room.

Other than adding a serene touch to the interior design, the different shades of grey on the walls also contribute to separating the different functional areas. The deeper grey color above the bed contributes to separating the bedroom from the rest of the open-plan apartment.

Art prints and area rugs visually outline areas with different functionality.

The gallery wall above the bed provides a visual separation between the bed and the wardrobe and the area rug contributes to outlining the bed in the space. The dining room is small yet fits well in between the kitchen and living room. By adding some picture frames on the wall the dining area is visually separated from the rest of the space, even though it’s all one room. The area rug underneath the sofa visually separates the sofa area from the rest of the space.

via Alvhem

I’ve heard brown is the new beige and while I still love the way beige can add such a calm and serene vibe to any room, brown has a similar effect, yet it can be much warmer and characterful. Both the living room and bedroom in this bright, light-flooded Scandinavian home have been finished off with shades of brown and I love the way it ties both rooms together.

The sheer beige curtains* in the living room warm up the natural light coming from the windows and the white linen sofa combined with the white fluffy area rug add the perfect base for the brown furniture pieces and accessories. Beige, terracotta, and brown textiles are added both on the sofa and the bed, which combined with the deep wooden furniture warms up the space even more.

While brown and beige play the main role in both the bedroom and living room, the kitchen has a different look. Here the white tiles and cabinet fronts are contrasted with a dark green-grey wall, which adds a lovely touch of contrast to the interior as a whole.

Styled by Grey Deco for Alvhem

What is an eclectic Scandinavian interior?

Scandinavian interior design and eclecticism might not be the obvious combination your mind goes to when thinking about styles to combine. With its clean lines, light color palette, and nordic cultural influences, a Scandinavian style couldn’t be more different than the eclectic interior design. Yet opposites attract and I think it’s exactly the contrast between the two styles that work well. Take this gorgeous apartment for example, where eclectic home decor adds character and personality to the otherwise clean look of the Scandinavian interior.

An eclectic dusty pink bedroom

While the living room of this characterful Scandinavian apartment interior has a few interesting pieces, the bedroom is definitely the most eclectic room in this home with its bold color choices. With its dusty pink walls, sculptural bed headboard, vintage art pieces, and blue sideboard, it has a very characterful and cozy look that I’m sure was carefully thought out and experimented with. 

A subtle eclectic living room with a built-in bookcase

While the living room has been designed more modestly, here the vintage dining table and chairs forming the dining room combined with the large-sized artwork on the wall also look very personal and interesting. The vintage pieces really draw attention in the room and I love the addition of the Valerie objects wall lamp in this setting. The big corduroy pouf serves as a coffee table as well and the blue vintage lamp on the stool next to the curtains is a lovely addition.

via Historiska Hem

This beautiful Scandinavian apartment has a gorgeous living room, which has been styled in black and white for a beautiful contrasting effect. The eye-catcher of the living room is certainly the fluffy area rug, which pairs up nicely with the white linen sofa and the sheer white linen curtains in front of the windows.

While there isn’t a trace of color to be detected in the living room, the bedroom combines a muted blue wall with a soft beige velvet headboard for a soft look that can be seen from the living area. In between the living room and bedroom you can find a round dining table combined with a walnut sideboard, which doesn’t have any direct natural light coming in, but I’m sure the round mirror on the wall reflects some of the daylight coming in through the other rooms.

Styled by Linnéa H. Manaberi, photographed by Anders Bergstedt , for Alvhem

It looks like every single piece of furniture has found the perfect spot in this rather small apartment. No matter how little space you have available, you can always find the perfect solution to make your home functional with a balanced look, without making it look too crowded.

In this home with beautiful herringbone flooring and a beige color palette, I love the way the kitchen has been fitted in a fairly small space, creating a rather small bedroom on the other side of the wall. Both rooms are connected to the living area, yet are visually separate in a nice way. In between the bedroom and the kitchen, a wardrobe was built in (closed storage space is so important, no matter the size of your home), which indents the wall of the greige bedroom, shielding it slightly from the rest of the space.

While space has clearly been optimized in the kitchen and bedroom, the living area feels very spacious and offers a spot for dining and lounging. The round white dining table fits four Wishbone chairs around it and is finished off with a fabric pendant light above it.

via Alvhem

This stylish Scandinavian studio home with a combined living and sleeping space makes it look so cozy and effortless to style a small space for living and sleeping. What attracts me to this home the most is the sophisticated mixture of modest colors that work wonderfully together. The sage green wall color has a warm undertone, which gives the space a cooler look. Yet by combining it with those beautiful sheer beige curtains and warm beige accessories the color palette becomes balanced and much more interesting.

via Stadshem