Vintage Interior Paint Colors

Keep It Simple

• For a basic look from before 1900, keep it simple. Choose basic colors, such as whites, pastels like peach and light pink, and other light colors. Pair light colors with darker shades, such as midnight blue or black, to create the simple but elegant contrast often found in colonial and classical buildings.

Add Elegance with Jewel Tones

• The Victorian period was an age of opulence and elegance and the interior walls of many people's homes reflected this fact. To create a Victorian feel in your home, stick with jewel tones, such as amber browns, jades, ruby reds, emerald green, sapphire blues and other similar shades. Use heavy wood colors, like mahogany and metallic elements, such as gold and silver, as accent pieces or colors in a more elaborate room.

Create Contrast

• If your home was built in the 1920s or during the Art Deco period, capture the feeling of the period by creating bold contrasts on your interior walls. Pair muted, watery blues, purples and greens with bolder colors, like deep purple, blue and black. Use stained-glass accent pieces to fill small windows, add color and create even more color contrast within the space.

Color It Up

• From the late 1920s through the 1940s, interior design was all about coloring it up. A large mishmash of warm, cool and neutral colors was often used together in one room. A single kitchen design from 1929 on Antique Home Style features cream, yellow, light blue, sage green, two different shades of gray and a rust-brown shade.

Go Bold

• For a look from after World War II, go bold. Pair bold colors, like fuchsia, cherry red, mustard yellow and bright purple with paler shades in the same color family, or a neutral contrasting color like white, to create a bright post-war statement. If bold colors on your walls aren't for you, paint your walls a neutral shade and use bold-colored fabrics to deck out the space.