15 Best Shabby Chic Paint Colors
Shabby chic pairs worn or antique-inspired furniture with soft colors, comfortable fabrics, and floral details. White and cream often form the base, with pastels and a few darker accents added around them.
To achieve the shabby chic style, you want to think of softness and warmth. Usually, shabby chic starts with white, then branches out to more pastels with occasional pops of deeper colors.
So, what are the best shabby chic paint colors? The best shabby chic paint colors include white, cream, blush pink, mint green, teal, grey, beige, and more. The idea is to stay mainly within the pastel color palette, while branching out for accent pops of vivid colors.
Here are fifteen color families to consider, with paint examples for furniture and a few ideas for pairing them. Choose a base neutral, one pastel, and one accent before buying several tins of paint.
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What Is Shabby Chic?
Homes that are decorated in the shabby chic style usually have the feel of an old 18-19th century French cottage. The furniture is old, but has a sense of newness.
The style is closely associated with Rachel Ashwell. Her Shabby Chic brand began with a small Santa Monica store in 1989, bringing together vintage finds, slipcovered furniture, and a soft, lived-in look.
These slipcovers were designed to be soft and romantic in style, usually with floral or decorative motif patterns. The base of shabby chic is often white, or an off-white. This gives the designer or homeowner a clean base to start with as they begin to incorporate other colors.
Mainly pastel colors are incorporated throughout the shabby chic interior design. This includes any pale versions of colors, such as blush pink or mint green. You can read more about pastel colors here.
With a predominantly white and soft color palette, it can bring a lot of balance to the décor by incorporating one or two pieces with a deeper or more vivid color. This would include colors such as forest green or teal.
Shabby chic is a style that benefits from distressed furniture. It’s a design that incorporates the old with the new.
A popular project for people looking to DIY their home into a shabby chic design is to take an old piece of furniture and refinish it using two color distressing. You can read more about two color distressing with chalk paint here.
What Is Shabby Chic Furniture?
As we mentioned above, shabby chic furniture is anything that has an old, antique look with soft colors. Many modern furniture designs include sleek, clean lines, whereas older furniture had more intricate designs in the carving of the wood or shaping of the metal.
If you compare a modern mirror to an antique mirror, you can clearly see the difference in design. It’s also apparent when comparing modern dressers to antique-inspired dressers.
The list goes on. You can also compare modern and antique versions of bed frames and headboards, lamps, end tables, coffee tables, and more.
Shabby chic incorporates more of that antique look. The intricate, carved designs add a sense of elegance, especially when accented by a metallic color.
When combining those intricate, carved designs with soft pastel colors and floral designs, you get the cozy, vintage vibe of shabby chic with any furniture item you own.
The Best Shabby Chic Paint Colors
For a furniture project, a matte chalk-style paint can suit the distressed look. For walls, choose a formula intended for walls rather than assuming every furniture paint will behave the same way.
The list below includes furniture paints and one interior wall paint. Country Chic’s current FAQ distinguishes its All-in-One furniture paint from its acrylic wall paint. Check the product’s surface preparation and finishing instructions, the selected color, and the tin size before ordering. Test a sample in your room: the same gray or cream can look different beside your flooring and in evening light.
1. White
White is the foundation on which shabby chic is built. You typically start with plain white walls, possibly even some white furniture pieces with small colorful accents, then build from there.
You can try Chalky White from Shabby Chic or Crinoline from Country Chic for recommended white paints. Both of these white paints will create a perfect base to start with before you begin adding other colors to your shabby chic home.
Just remember that chalk paints are best used on furniture. While you can also use them on walls if you like, it would work best to use an interior paint such as the white from Prestige Paints.
2. Cream
Cream is another popular color to use for shabby chic home décor. You can either use cream as your base, or use it for some of your furniture items. Cream works well when used with a dark color as the base layer for distressing furniture.
White can be a little too bright and harsh on the eyes for some people, but cream brings a nice warmth and balance.
We recommend using Cheesecake from Country Chic. It has a nice balance of neutral warmth to the cream color. It’s not too close to white, but not so tinted that it appears beige.
3. Blush Pink
Once you’re ready to start incorporating pops of color, blush pink is one of the first ones people reach for.
Blush pink is a popular color in a lot of shabby chic floral imagery. The softness of the pale shade combined with the subtle, warm color of pink creates a dreamy, romantic look.
Typically furniture items are covered in blush pink, but it can also be used as an accent color for distressing or just on fine details.
You can either use Ooh La La from Country Chic or Baby Pink from Shabby Chic. Both of these are great subtle pinks that have the nice soft, pastel tone.
4. Peach/Coral/Salmon
Moving away from the pastels and soft colors, peach is a fun vivid color that looks great with shabby chic.
Peach, coral, and salmon sit in a similar pink-orange family, but they are not interchangeable paint colors. Compare an actual sample rather than choosing by the color name alone.
This color family is characterized by a vibrant pink color with some orange mixed in, looking much like the color of raw salmon fish filets.
We recommend the color Sunset Glow by Country Chic. It’s the perfect balance of pink and orange with a vibrancy that will blend in amongst your pastel color palette.
5. Soft Yellow
Another common color in the shabby chic world of home décor is a soft yellow.
The spectrum of yellow is a lot wider than many people think. It includes anything from pale and soft yellows, up to bright yellows such as mustard, up into more muted and dark yellows.
For a shabby chic aesthetic, you want to stay more in the soft/pale yellow area. The other yellows stand out too much and break up the cozy feel of shabby chic.
For a pale yellow option, consider Bee’s Knees by Country Chic. A sample will help you judge whether it reads as yellow or cream in your room.
6. Mint/Sage Green
There are a few different greens you can incorporate for your shabby chic home décor. Let’s start with the light greens.
Mint usually reads as a cool, fresh green, while sage has a more muted, gray-green character. The undertones vary by paint brand, so compare the actual swatches.
Each of these offer a nice pastel shade of green that works great for shabby chic décor. They’re usually used to paint an entire furniture item that gets accented with another color, such as brown or metallics.
You can try using Sage Advice for your sage green or Happy Hour for a mint green, both from Country Chic. These colors will bring a nice, soft green into your shabby chic décor, which plays well with the floral designs usually found in shabby chic.
7. Forest Green
Moving into the darker greens, a nice evergreen or forest green works well in a shabby chic home too. You wouldn’t want it to be too vibrant. As you get into the brighter forest greens, they take away from the comfy, romantic, pretty shabby chic aesthetic.
The goal is to find a dark green that brings depth and drama with its shade, seeming to blend in perfectly among the pastels.
Think of the way dark leaves are a subtle background against a pale pink rose. They help to highlight the beauty of pastel colors without taking too much attention, but add a lot of depth.
We recommend using Hollow Hill by Country Chic. It’s a nice, gentle dark green that can really strengthen the beauty of your soft pastels.
8. Pale Blue
The blue color family is a rich choice for shabby chic. You can use many areas of the spectrum of blues, but we’ll start with pale blue. Staying in line with the dreamy pastel look of shabby chic, pale blue is another nice addition.
In contrast with the warmth of the floral designs and soft pinks and yellows, pale blue adds a nice balance to the room with a soft cool color accent.
It works great when combined with metallic gold or bronze as accent colors, either in the hardware or on the edges of the furniture piece.
For a richer blue alternative, consider Nightfall from Country Chic. The manufacturer describes Nightfall as a rich blue, so do not treat it as a pale pastel. Choose a lighter sample if you want the softer look described in this section.
9. Teal
If you’re someone who loves a good pop of color and wants to be sure to incorporate some vibrancy among the pastels, then teal is the perfect choice for you.
A teal or turquoise can be the perfect pop of bright color amidst all of the pale pastels you’ve used to achieve shabby chic. Of course, you can also choose more pastel teals like this lovely shade called Happy Hour.
You’ll have to be careful not to go too bright and risk losing the cozy aesthetic if you go for a brighter shade. For example, the color Tropical Cocktail would be a little too light and bright to fit in nicely with shabby chic.
Instead, use the color Whoop-de-do from Country Chic. It’s a little darker than Tropical Cocktail, and when you’re hunting for pops of color to add to your pastels, you want them to be a little on the darker side to avoid being too bright.
10. Deep Blue
A deeper blue can add contrast to a mostly white or pastel room. Use it on one cabinet, a side table, or a small detail if you want the rest of the room to stay light.
Instead, you want to go for a deep, rich blue that’s a little muted. Muted colors often have a little grey added to them to reduce the vibrancy of the original color.
We recommend using Cottage Blue from Shabby Chic or Tide Pool from Country Chic.
Cottage Blue has a more grey-tinted, subtle look, while Tide Pool offers a little more brightness in the blue while still maintaining a softer profile compared to navy or cerulean.
11. Lilac/Lavender
Lilac and lavender are similar in color. They’re both pale shades of purple, one of them being a little brighter depending on the manufacturer.
Lilac or lavender have a similar effect on shabby chic décor as pale blue. It offers another soft pastel color, but one on the cool color spectrum that serves to balance a lot of the warmth.
We recommend using either Scottish Heather by Shabby Chic or Wisteria by Country Chic. Both are nice, soft, subtle shades of pastel purple.
12. Light Grey
Light gray works as a neutral base, while darker gray can be an accent. The choice depends on how much contrast you want and how the paint looks in your room.
Light grey can serve as a nice neutral to build your whole room around. If you’re someone that isn’t a huge fan of white or cream, then light grey can be the perfect pastel neutral for your shabby chic décor.
Winter Grey by Shabby Chic is one option to sample for a light-gray scheme. Country Chic’s Pebble Beach belongs in the medium-gray group below rather than among very pale grays.
13. Medium Grey
If the paleness of light grey is too much for you, you can branch out into the darker shades of medium grey.
For a mid-tone gray, consider Pebble Beach by Country Chic. The manufacturer identifies Pebble Beach as a mid-tone gray. It gives more contrast than a near-white gray without requiring a charcoal finish.
For deeper contrast, Hurricane is another Country Chic option. Its official description is a deep, cool gray with blue undertones, rather than a middle-of-the-road gray. You can also compare Pebble Grey by Shabby Chic. Color names are not consistent across brands.
If you prefer a warm brown accent, Dark Roast is a separate choice, not a gray. Country Chic describes Dark Roast as a deep brown; keep it to a smaller accent if you want a predominantly light scheme.
14. Beige
Beige can vary a lot in color depending on the manufacturer. It is a light brown, but how light that brown is differs, as well as the warmth or coolness of the brown.
For shabby chic, you can really use any shade of beige. As long as it stays on the lighter sides of the brown family and doesn’t move into medium or dark browns, you’ll be in the sweet spot.
You can try using a lighter beige such as Road Trip or a darker beige such as Driftwood, both from Country Chic.
Road Trip would work best with other warm colors such as pinks and yellows, while Driftwood is a little more neutral and could work with warm and cool colors.
15. Metallic
Finally, an important aspect of shabby chic is the included accents of metallic colors.
Whether you use gold, silver, or bronze, metallic highlights accentuate the elegant and opulent side of the shabby chic aesthetic.
Metallic accents are optional. A little gold, silver, or bronze on hardware or carved details can add contrast, but you can keep the finish matte if that suits your room better.
You can use Antique Champagne, Antique Gold, or Antique Silver from Shabby Chic.
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