67 Pastel Color Palettes

Pastels work because they are quiet. They reflect a lot of light, so even a small or dim room feels a bit more open and fresh. They also sit gently in the background, which means your furniture, art, and the people in the room get to be the focus instead of the walls.

The other reason they work is balance. A good pastel paint palette never relies on the soft shade alone. It pairs that pale color with a clean white for trim and a deeper accent, like the caramel in the Apricot Nursery Palette, to keep the room from feeling washed out. That mix of soft, light, and one richer note is what makes a pastel scheme feel finished instead of flat.

The biggest thing to get right with a pastel is the undertone. A pale blue can lean cool and icy or warm and gray, and a blush can lean pink or peach. Look at the other colors in the palette to see which way it goes. The Dawn Light scheme, for example, keeps its dawn blue warm by sitting it next to cloud white and petal blush, so the whole room feels soft rather than cold.

Depth matters too. Pastels are light by nature, but some are barely-there and others have a touch more color. If you want the wall shade to read clearly, pick a pastel with a little more pigment. If you want it to feel almost like a tinted white, go paler. Always test a sample before you commit, because pastels shift a lot from the chip to a full wall.

Light changes a pastel more than almost any other color. North-facing rooms get cool, flat light, which can make a pale blue or gray look chilly. In those rooms, lean toward the warmer pastels, like soft apricot or gentle cream, to keep things cozy. South-facing rooms get warm sun most of the day, so they can carry cooler pastels like powder mint or cloud blue without feeling cold.

It also helps to think about time of day. A nursery used mostly in the evening will look very different under lamplight than in morning sun. The Morning Amber scheme leans into this, pairing a soft sky blue with a warm amber accent so the room still feels warm when the daylight fades.

Pastels love a clean trim white and one grounding color. The white sharpens the edges of doors, windows, and baseboards so the soft wall shade does not blur into them. The grounding color, often a deeper greige, slate, or caramel, gives your eye somewhere to rest. You can see this in the Pastel Blue Cloud palette, where soft linen and a dusty lilac keep a room of pale blues from feeling like fog.

For accents beyond paint, natural materials work best. Light wood, woven baskets, linen fabric, and a few greens from plants all sit nicely against pastel walls. Avoid pairing several strong pastels at full strength in one room; let one lead and keep the others as quieter supporting shades.

Bedrooms and nurseries are where pastels shine. Soft blues and peaches help a room feel restful, which is exactly what you want for sleep. In a nursery, a scheme like Apricot Nursery keeps things warm and gentle without going fully pink or blue, so it suits any child and grows with them.

Kitchens and bathrooms can take pastels too, but they ask for a bit more contrast. A pale aqua in a bathroom looks fresh against a crisp white, as the Aqua Bathroom Palette shows, and a deeper teal accent on a vanity or shelf keeps it from feeling washed out. In a kitchen, pastel cabinets or a single soft wall paired with white work better than covering every surface in the same pale tone.

Once you find a pastel color scheme you like, start with samples. Buy small pots of the wall color and the trim white, paint a big patch on two different walls, and look at them in the morning and at night. Pastels are sensitive to light, so this step saves you from surprises after the whole room is done.

When you are ready to buy, you are not locked to one brand. Each color in these palettes is matched to the nearest shade at Benjamin Moore, Sherwin-Williams, Behr, Kompozit, and others, so you can mix and match. You might get the wall color in one brand and the trim in another, and any paint store can tint all of them to order from the same recipe.