Benjamin Moore Pale Oak is a warm, neutral paint color perfect for interior color palettes. Explore a real home’s Pale Oak coordinating colors in this Color Concierge room-by-room guide.
The house featured in today’s post is a gorgeous two-story home in an older Denver neighborhood. We’ve worked on this home multiple times over the years as professional paint color consultants, collaborating with the homeowner as she updated various spaces.
Recently, the home was sold (in fact, it’s such a beautiful space it never even officially made it on the market!), so the homeowner asked if we could come in and take photos of the entire home before they moved out.
Benjamin Moore Pale Oak (Article) was the foundational color for this whole-house palette – a very light taupe that feels warm and inviting. The trim and the white ceilings were painted with Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace (Article), a clean white we love for this purpose. Keep reading to explore all the paint colors in this Pale Oak color scheme.
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What Color is BM Pale Oak?
Before we explore the full color palette, it’s important to get a clear understanding of Benjamin Moore Pale Oak. Pale Oak is a grayish taupe. It can be considered a greige hue with warm taupe undertones. It’s soft but still light and warm.
With an LRV of 68.64, it’s light enough to work in almost any space but also has enough pigment so it won’t look washed out even in bright light.
I love Pale Oak paint, and I’m definitely not alone! It is truly one of the best neutral paint colors for interiors.
What colors go with Pale Oak?
Pale Oak is a versatile paint color that pairs well with a wide range of hues and hard finishes. But my favorite way to bring this color to life is to pair it with warm blues, greens and natural warm wood tones. Avoid wood tones with strong yellow undertones.
Accessorizing Pale Oak rooms with colorful art and bold area rugs, as in the room below, is a simple way to make the color really shine.
It also looks beautiful with warm, natural wood tones, as seen in this hallway and stairwell.
We like to pair Pale Oak with a clean, bright white for trim and ceilings. In this home, we used Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace to provide contrast throughout the home.
Sample Your Favorite Paint Colors
We always recommend that you test paint colors (Article) in your home because lighting can completely change a color, both on interiors and exteriors.
In the old days, this meant we painted a large poster board with sample pots and a huge mess.
Now we have a better way to test paint, with Samplize Peel-and-Stick samples!
- Samples pre-painted with 2 coats of real paint from the manufacturer.
- Large 9” x 14” samples to see the color better in the lighting.
- Delivered overnight
- Colors are accurate
- Less expensive than painting a large poster board with sample pots
- No mess, and no toxic paint to dispose of
I use these in my color consulting practice for exact results. Discover Samplize peel-and-stick paint samples and sample all your favorite exterior house colors via the link below.
Benjamin Moore Pale Oak Whole-House Interior Palette – Room by Room
Keep reading to explore this home’s warm and cozy Benjamin Moore Pale Oak color palette, with real-life photos taken room by room.
Benjamin Moore Pale Oak: Living Room, Hallways, Bedrooms
We used BM Pale Oak (Sample) in several spaces throughout this home, including the living room, dining room, hallways and a few upstairs rooms. This versatile hue looked beautiful in all of these spaces!
I absolutely love the way Pale Oak looks in this upstairs bedroom. The room has lots of natural light and unique, slanted ceilings, which presented us with a unique challenge. Painting these ceilings white would have overly accentuated the unusual ceiling shapes, and could have made the room look cheap. Instead, we used a modified color-drench and carried Pale Oak into the ceiling, adding contrast with Chantilly Lace trim and doors. this way the unique architectural elements of the ceiling were accentuated with subtle shade and light.
This bedroom is also brought to life with gorgeous warm wood floors and pops of greens and blues that make Pale Oak shine on the wall, such as this colorful ocean art piece next to the bed.
The green striped area rug also looks really beautiful with the Pale Oak walls and adds even more warmth to the already warm floors.
In the upstairs hallway, Pale Oak helps bring the different spaces of the home together. I love the views of the closet room and home office on opposite ends of the hall.
The Pale Oak stairway is also beautiful, with more warm wood floors and a gorgeous wood banister and railing that leads down to a Benjamin Moore Wrought Iron (Article) front door (one of our favorite interior door colors (Article)!).
Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace: Interior Trim
We used Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace (Article) as the trim and ceiling color throughout the home, in the spaces where we didn’t drench the ceilings with the wall color, as noted. With an LRV of 90.04 and barely-there cool undertones, this clean white is one of the best Benjamin Moore trim colors.
Chantilly Lace (Sample) adds enough contrast to the Pale Oak walls to make them pop and pairs well with all the other hues in this whole-house palette.
Benjamin Moore Buckland Blue: Living Room Accent Wall
The living room was a project completed by a previous homeowner, but I absolutely love the interesting color combinations in this room.
Most of the walls were painted with BM Pale Oak, continuing the color on the lower level of the home, but accent walls on each end of the room are painted with Benjamin Moore Buckland Blue (Sample).
With an LRV of 23.2 and warm, green undertones, Buckland Blue adds a gorgeous pop of color to this space without overwhelming it. I usually don’t like to paint accent walls where there’s a window because it can look really backlit and make the color hard to see, but in this case an outside covered front porch shades the windows and helps the accent wall shine.
The most unique thing about this space, however, wasn’t the blue accent wall but the warm beige ceiling with pink undertones. It is super earthy, and while it’s not a color choice I would typically make in my consulting practice, it is stunning in this room.
Benjamin Moore Stone Hearth: Dining Room
Pale Oak walls carry on into the dining room of this home, too, on the upper parts of the walls. This was the first room I worked on with this homeowner, and it’s such a beautiful space, with unique natural wood molding.
We chose BM Stone Hearth (Sample), a mid-toned taupe color with warm undertones and an LRV of 48.45, for the panels between all the wood trim. I actually pulled the color from the gorgeous blue-and-taupe area rug she has in the dining room, which really brings the space together.
Benjamin Moore Instinct: Kitchen
Benjamin Moore Instinct (Sample) is one of the most unique colors used within this palette – especially considering this hue is used in the client’s kitchen! This was another room I did not personally work on, but I wanted to share it.
This is a great example of a color that is beautiful, flows with the palette, but not the finishes. It illustrates how important it is to ensure the color is harmonious with the finishes and decor.
BM Instinct is a fresh, mid-toned cool blue-gray with an LRV of 55.12 and lilac undertones. The color pairs beautifully with the palette, but not as well with the kitchen finishes (which, on their own, are nice). We usually pick colors with a similar level of mutedness to the finishes. I would have chosen an earthier color, or even a creamier white, for the walls and window trim.
This is a good example of a color that fits the palette but doesn’t fit the space. If I were working on this space, I probably would have used Pale Oak for the kitchen walls (Article).
Benjamin Moore Beneath the Clouds (Benjamin Moore Nimbus Gray): Bedroom
Benjamin Moore Beneath the Clouds (Sample) (formerly BM Nimbus Gray) is another beautiful blue color. With an LRV of 41.78, this hue is really more of a blue-gray with strong blue undertones. We choose this color a lot when a homeowner wants a soft blue and we want to ensure it doesn’t glow too bright on the wall.
For this upstairs bedroom, we once again used a modified color drench to better highlight the shape of the ceilings and walls. We used BM Chantilly Lace trim and doors to add contrast.
Benjamin Moore Silver Marlin: Bathrooms, Office and Closet
Benjamin Moore Silver Marlin (Sample) is a really interesting color. It’s a gray paint color but it has strong blue-green undertones. It reminds me a lot of Sherwin-Williams Sea Salt, but darker, less colorful and more muted, with an LRV of 55.99.
We used BM Silver Marlin in an upstairs bathroom, the office, and the closet. It looks beautiful in all of these spaces!
In the bathroom pictured below, Silver Marlin pairs perfectly with the bright blue glass tile.
In the office, a bright teal rug helps bring the Silver Marlin walls to life.
For the closet, Silver Marlin serves as the perfect neutral backdrop for colorful clothes and accessories.
Benjamin Moore Kensington Blue: Basement Bedroom
A basement is a great place to experiment with a bold paint color, and that’s exactly what we did in this client’s basement bedroom – painting it with Benjamin Moore Kensington Blue (Sample).
Kensington Blue has an LRV of 11.97 and warm, green undertones that look gorgeous in rooms with lots of light. Despite being a basement space, this bedroom actually had a lot of natural light, so the color worked really well.
The key for this space was to balance the deep blue walls with plenty of white trim and a white ceiling, painted in BM Chantilly Lace.
Sherwin-Williams Sea Salt: Basement Bathroom
For the basement bathroom, we used Sherwin-Williams Sea Salt (Article). With an LRV of 63 and warm, blue-green undertones, SW Sea Salt (Sample) is a brighter and lighter version of Silver Marlin but is still muted enough to be considered a gray color.
Sample The Full Pale Oak Color Palette
- Benjamin Moore Pale Oak
- Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace
- Benjamin Moore Buckland Blue
- Benjamin Moore Stone Hearth
- Benjamin Moore Instinct
- Benjamin Moore Beneath the Clouds (Nimbus Gray)
- Benjamin Moore Silver Marlin
- Benjamin Moore Kensington Blue
- Sherwin-Williams Sea Salt
Key Learning Points
Benjamin Moore Pale Oak is a warm, inviting neutral paint color perfect for whole-house color palettes.
- Pair BM Pale Oak with warm blues and greens to really bring this hue to life.
- Pale Oak works beautifully with warm, natural wood finishes, such as wood flooring, wood trim and wood railings.
- We used a variety of blue and green paint colors – and decor – throughout the home, which helped tie the whole space together.
Remember: NEVER, EVER use paint matches from a different brand than the one specified. Results are poor and there are no standards for the sheens. Even though your painter may truly believe it can be done, don’t do it. See results from paint matching here.
No matter what, always test your paint colors. It’s a standard best practice. Whenever I test my paint colors, they are perfect, and when I don’t test they turn out wrong. Learn how to test your paint colors here.
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Related Posts:
- Benjamin Moore Pale Oak Color Review
- Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace Color Review
- Sherwin-Williams Sea Salt Color Review
- Best Taupe Paint Colors
About the Author
Hi, I’m Michelle Marceny, founder, owner, and Principal Color Designer at The Color Concierge. I believe a fresh coat of paint can completely transform a space. The Color Concierge was born out of my drive to help clients fall back in love with their homes. My clients trust me to help them find the perfect paint color for their home – whether it’s a whole-house paint color scheme or ideas for a single room.
Since The Color Concierge was founded in 2017, we have completed over 3000 color consultations, both online and in-person. I am a Certified Color Expert with 7 years of experience creating interior and exterior color palettes throughout North America.
We love your comments! Please note that the blog is meant as general advice, and it is not possible to give out specific answers to your paint questions. If you want more specific advice, our Online Color Consultations will help you pick your paint colours. Thank you for your understanding.
