Ceiling Color Picker

How to use the ceiling color picker

1. Pick a room. Start with the sample bedroom or home office, or tap Upload or take a photo to use your own room.
2. Pick your wall color. Browse the six color families or type any color code. On a sample room the walls are repainted in it and the ceiling follows.
3. Say how high the ceiling is. Low, standard or high. The two ceilings that suit that height are marked try first, with the reason.
4. Tap a ceiling. A white with your walls’ undertone, a lighter version, the same color or two steps darker. Each shows its LRV (how much light it reflects) and, once the page has loaded, the closest Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore and Behr paint.
5. On your own photo, tap each wall in your wall color first. Then tap a ceiling in the list and tap the ceiling in your photo. Compare shows the before and after.

What Benjamin Moore says about ceiling colors

Benjamin Moore treats it as a choice, not a rule: Whether you paint your ceiling a color that’s darker or lighter than the surrounding walls is a design choice. Many like the look of a clean white paint color on the ceiling. Some prefer to use the same color on the walls and ceiling for a cohesive feel. For a dramatic style, opt for a darker or more saturated hue on the ceiling for a bold pop. Those are three of the picker’s four ceilings. The fourth comes from its ceiling ideas article: painting the ceiling with a lighter shade–often a lighter variant of the wall color–is a clever design choice.

On a white ceiling, the same article says: For seamless color flow, select a white for your ceiling that shares a similar undertone as the wall color. That is why the picker’s white is not plain white: it carries a trace of your wall color. On height: A lighter paint color above eye level can help to visually raise the ceiling. For a dark ceiling, the article suggests a paint color that is two to three shades darker on your ceiling than your walls, and Benjamin Moore’s ceiling colors page adds that darker hues like navy blue or charcoal look striking, especially in rooms with high ceilings.

On the finish, Benjamin Moore is plain: When painting ceilings, a flat finish is the best choice. Sherwin-Williams and Behr name flat for ceilings too (the free paint sheen finder reads all three).

How the picker works out each ceiling

Benjamin Moore gives no numbers for “a lighter variant” or “a few shades darker”, so the picker uses its own, shown here so you can check them. Colors are measured in CIELAB, where L* is lightness from 0 (black) to 100 (white).

• A white with your walls’ undertone: lightness 94 (or your walls’ own, if they are lighter still), in your wall color’s hue at a chroma of 4 or less, so a trace of it shows. A warm wall gets a warm white, a blue-gray wall a cool one.
• A lighter version: halfway between your wall color and that white. It is lighter and softer, the way a paint store’s half-strength mix of the wall color is.
• The same color: your wall color.
• Two steps darker: the same hue, 20 points of lightness lower.

Which two the picker marks try first is our reading of the quotes above: a low ceiling gets the white and the lighter version, a high one the darker and the same color, and a standard one the same color for light walls (LRV 55 and up) or the white and the lighter version for mid and dark walls.

Ceiling colors for common wall colors

The four ceilings for eight of the wall colors on the board, with each one’s LRV and the closest Benjamin Moore paint to the white and the lighter version. The picker shows Sherwin-Williams and Behr too, for any color you pick.

LRV is light reflectance value: 0 is black, 100 a perfect white. Every closest paint is from the brand’s own digital color file; check a real chip before you buy, because a screen cannot show paint exactly.

Three worked examples

Sage walls, an 8-foot ceiling. The sample bedroom opens with Sage walls (LRV 44) and a white ceiling with Sage’s undertone (LRV 85), close to Benjamin Moore’s Harwood Putty. The white and the lighter version, a pale sage at LRV 62, are marked try first: for mid-tone walls they keep the ceiling from closing in.

Navy walls, a 10-foot ceiling. Pick Navy and High. The suggestion becomes two steps darker or the same navy: a dark lid on a tall room is the cozy, dramatic look Benjamin Moore describes. Not that brave? The white with navy’s cool undertone (LRV 85) is still there.

Greige walls, the same color on the ceiling. Pick Greige (LRV 63, a light color) with a standard ceiling, and the same color comes first: on light walls there is no line where the walls stop, so the room reads as one wrapped space. The one shopping-list catch is the finish: the walls take their usual sheen, the ceiling flat.

Common mistakes when picking a ceiling color

• A stark white over warm walls. A bright blue-white ceiling over beige or greige walls can look cold next to them. Pick a white that shares the walls’ undertone, as Benjamin Moore advises.
• Using wall paint with a sheen. Eggshell or satin on a ceiling shows every bump and roller lap when the light rakes across it. Ceilings get flat.
• Going dark under a low ceiling. A dark ceiling brings it down visually. Keep dark ceilings for high rooms, or for a small room you want to feel like a cocoon on purpose.
• Judging a ceiling chip held in your hand. A ceiling gets less direct light than a wall, so it usually reads darker than the same chip at eye level. Look at a sample painted on the ceiling itself.
• Forgetting the paint. A colored ceiling is a second color to buy. The free paint calculator works out the gallons for the walls and the ceiling.

Read next

• Bold ceiling paint ideas
• Can you use the same paint for walls and ceilings?
• Flat or satin paint for your ceiling?
• Color drenching room ideas
• Sloped ceiling bedrooms
• Decorating tall walls in high-ceiling rooms