The 2027 Paint Colors and the Lighting Finishes That Go With Them

Written by Rick Kovac, COO of Golden Lighting

The takeaway: The 2027 paint colors are earthy greens, terracotta and soft blues. Each one looks its best with a particular family of metal finishes and a warm bulb. Here are the pairings we'd use.

Key takeaways:

The big paint brands' 2027 picks include Sherwin-Williams Celery (herbal green), Behr Grounded (mossy olive), Dutch Boy Deep Rooted (earthy orange), Glidden Artifact (smoky blue) and Valspar Cottage Door (steely blue).
Warm earth tones pair best with brass, bronze and rust. Blues pair well with nickel and soft golds.
Keep living-space bulbs at 2700K–3000K. Use the warm end for terracotta and olive, and the cooler end of that range for blues.
Test any color at night under your own fixtures. Bulb color changes paint more than most people expect.

Every fall the paint companies announce their colors for the coming year, and the natural next question is what lighting goes with them. The 2027 picks are more colorful than the soft neutrals of the last few years. That makes the metal finish and the bulb color matter more.

The 2027 colors at a glance

Sherwin-Williams and HGTV Home by Sherwin-Williams both chose Celery for 2027. Young House Love's running list of the other big brands' picks includes:

Behr Grounded: a mossy olive with brown undertones.
Dutch Boy Deep Rooted: an earthy orange, close to terracotta.
Glidden Artifact: a smoky blue.
Valspar Cottage Door: a steely blue.

Put together, they read as a move toward nature: greens, clay and weathered blues.

Styled scene: a kitchen with a mossy olive island and lower cabinets, cream walls and upper cabinets, and a black six-arm island light with ivory linen shades over the island

Styled scene: the Kennedy 6-light Island Light in Natural Black and Ivory Linen over an island painted a mossy olive like Behr's Grounded, with black pulls and faucets repeating the fixture's black, all under warm 2700K light.

Finish pairings for each color

2027 color	Metal finishes that work	Shade and glass	Bulb color
Celery (herbal green)	Brushed or aged brass, champagne bronze	White and milk glass, rattan	2700K–3000K
Grounded (mossy olive)	Aged brass, black iron, rubbed bronze	Linen, natural rattan	2700K
Deep Rooted (earthy orange)	Aged brass, dark rust, matte black	Ivory fabric, opal glass	2700K
Artifact (smoky blue)	Polished nickel, champagne bronze	Clear, fluted or hammered glass	3000K
Cottage Door (steely blue)	Polished nickel, white gold, matte black	White pleated fabric, alabaster	3000K

These are our design team's pairings, not rules from the paint companies. The logic behind them is simple: warm colors look right under warm light and next to warm metals, and cool colors can take the cooler end of a room's range.

Our rule: pick the metal to match the undertone of the wall, then pick the bulb to match both.

How to make the pairing work in your room

Find the undertone. Hold the paint chip next to a piece of white paper. Olive and terracotta lean warm; Artifact and Cottage Door lean cool.
Match the metal to the undertone. Warm walls get brass, bronze or rust. Cool walls get nickel, white gold or black. Black works almost everywhere.
Repeat the metal at least twice. A brass chandelier and brass cabinet pulls read as a plan. One brass piece alone can look like an accident.
Keep the bulbs the same color throughout the room. Mixing 2700K and 4000K in one room makes any paint color look wrong.
Use high-CRI bulbs. A CRI of 90 or higher shows the color's real depth. Saturated greens and oranges look flat under low-CRI light.

If you choose the deeper version

If you love these colors but want a moodier room, you may end up with a deeper color from the same family. Darker walls reflect less light, so a darker room needs more of it. The American Lighting Association's training manual puts it at about 20–50% more light for dark finishes. Keep the ceiling light, add sconces or picture lights so the light comes from more than one place, and put it all on dimmers. Our post on lighting brown and dark rooms goes into the details.