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Grey complementary colours


What Colors Go With Gray? Try These 11 Combinations

by Zoë Roscoe

updated Sep 18, 2022

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As versatile as it is timeless, the color gray is a rarity on the spectrum. Its ability to double as a neutral and work as a natural complement to a variety of hues makes it a decorative staple that can withstand a revolving door of trends. Pair it with white, pink, or soft blue, and it inspires a calming essence. Team it up with vibrant reds and yellows, and you’ll instantly feel its energizing effects. 

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Regardless of what you do with gray, you can count on the fact that it will fit in with just about any decorative style or space. To get you started, we compiled a shortlist of the colors that can take this dynamic shade to new heights.

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1. Gray with Brown

Not only does this Australia bedroom give total beach vibes, but it proves that gray and brown are, in fact, a perfectly acceptable color combination. We love the way the homeowner coordinated the curtains and the light fixtures to pick up the brown in the bedspread. 

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2. Gray with Pink

This expansive California living room is anything but childish, despite its pink accents. The combination looks upscale and elegant, proving that pink is definitely one of the colors that go with gray. 

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3. Gray with Black

Gray and black is one of those color combinations that makes you say, Oooh la la! And this beautiful living room by @homedecorgasm is no exception. We love the pops of orange that fit perfectly into this color pairing. 

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4. Gray with Dark Green

Ready to graduate from white? Sub in a soft gray for stark white for a refreshing take on a neutral color palette. Here, a whisper light gray on the fireplace and mantel offers a grounding detail to forest green walls.

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5. Gray with Orange

It’s rare that we have the opportunity to bring in a piece as vibrant as this orange lounge chair and actually make it work. But gray walls change all of that. Take notes from this eclectic home in Madrid, where the gray backdrop anchors the brighter elements of the room—from the seat to the green toned table, bust, and art work.

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6. Gray with Gray

A monochromatic color scheme may be one of the easiest palettes to decorate with, but to execute it properly, you need to mix different shades and textures to create balance. Varying touches of gray, plus a slight hint of lilac, give this serene bedroom a cool and clean finish.

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7. Gray with Royal Blue

In this luxe-meets-modern living room, soft, neutral walls complement the bold, electric royal blue armchairs, allowing the pieces to take center stage. Bamboo window treatments and a jute rug, layered with a textured Moroccan one, complement the scene without overpowering it.  

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8. Gray with Yellow

The cheerful combo of gray and yellow is sophisticated while still feeling playful. Here, a handful of splashes of zingy canary yellow prevent the otherwise neutral sofa, rug, and table from looking too quiet.

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9. Gray with Red 

Incorporating red in a room inspires a bit of passion and energy. Pair this hue with shades of gray, and it results in a high-contrast look that exudes a sense of timeless elegance. Take a cue from this farmhouse-chic living room and fill your space with a combo of crimson, ruby, and oxblood reds. Gray will certainly help cool off all of those warm tones, which creates a nice balance.

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10.

Gray with White

If a classic decor scheme is what you’re going for, consider this duo your secret weapon. Against the somewhat stark quality of white, a soothing shade of gray inspires a clean, airy look. Mix things up by adding in pops of color with art and potted plants.

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11. Gray with Green and Lavender

Brighten up dark gray walls by infusing your space with a playful dash of lavender and pink. In this subtly glam living room, an abundant bunch of textured throw pillows in light shades—think velvet, faux fur, and linen—create a cozy, welcoming atmosphere.

10 Creative Gray Color Combinations and Photos

What words come to mind when you think of your design style? If sophisticated and timeless describe your home, gray is your color! Similar to white, gray is a neutral color that offers balance. Gray color schemes also create calming environments to relax in after a long day.

Because a variety of colors pair well with this hue, it’s ideal for walls, accessories and furniture. Light shades of silver and cadet gray evoke a feminine vibe, while darker shades like charcoal and gunmetal exude a more masculine feel.

To find inspiration for your decor, select a gray color scheme to see examples of how you can use these colors in your home. Once you have a color palette in mind, browse our home decor for personalized items like candles, fleece blankets, accent pillows and more.

Angora Grey + Beige

Gray + Beige

Your bedroom is your sweet escape. So why not make it a place where you can relax for hours on end? Fluffy whites combined with lighter shades of gray create a calming atmosphere you’ll never want to leave. You can even bring in earth tones like forest green and beige.

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Stone + Navy

Stone + Navy

Blue is an electric color that brings a room to life. By pairing it with a darker gray, you get a balanced room that isn’t overpowered by blue. You can bring the masculinity of gray and blue down a notch by adding tan and green into the color scheme, making this a vibrant palette for your living room.

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Dark Gray + Electric Blue

Gray + Light Blue

If you feel like adding a bright pop of color to your bedroom, go for it! Keeping your walls white and accessorizing with gray is a refreshing way to pull off adding a bold color like sky blue into a room.

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Gray + Gold

Gray + Gold

Create a modern and contemporary feel with a dark gray color scheme. Similar to black, gray is moody and blends well with all colors. To make a statement, throw in an attention-grabbing accent color no one expects, like gold.

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Charcoal + Dark Green

Gray + Dark Green

Gray doesn't always have to set the tone for your decor. Instead, you can use a shade like silver as an accent color and add fresh plants to invigorate the space. It creates an open and clean environment perfect for bringing in energetic colors like aqua, cobalt blue and lavender.

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Gray + Lime

Gray + Light Green

Simplicity is key when you are going for timeless decor that will stand the test of time. While this may be true, you don’t have to rely on muted colors. Pairing feminine grays with bright pops of color, like neon green, create a sophisticated yet funky vibe.

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Gray + Orange Soda

Gray + Orange

A staple of industrial decor is dark palettes evocative of city life. While shades like charcoal provide a practical element, it’s always fun to mix in more adventurous colors. Peach and orange are two eye-catching tones that bring a creative flair to an otherwise calming palette.

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Dusk + Blush

Gray + Light Pink

Who can resist a little romance? Whether you’re decorating the area surrounding your vanity table or your bathroom, blush and cadet gray are an enchanting color combination. The blue undertones in this gray allow you to pull in green for a refreshing and natural vibe.

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Gray + Cherry Red

Gray + Red

Sometimes, the best color schemes combine more than one shade of gray. The cool tones create a polished look while a fiery color like red brings passion and energy. Complete the look by splashing an earth tone on the walls to bring everything together.

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Light Gray + Yellow

Gray + Yellow

For a living room full of enthusiasm and good cheer, you need a palette that reminds you of sunshine filled days. Choosing a calming shade of gray that blends with a springy yellow and earth tones will transport you to the great outdoors.

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Color wheel, complementary colors in painting and their contrast

Color wheel, complementary colors and their contrast in painting

Video lesson: color wheel, complementary colors in painting and contrast between them, abstract

1. In painting, blue, yellow and red are called primary, since mixing other colors you can not get them, but mixing primary colors you can get the rest.
2. If you gradually mix a little bit of red into yellow, and place each slightly redder shade next to the previous batch, making a smooth transition from yellow to red, and then also mix blue to red and yellow to blue, you get a color wheel:


Color wheel and complementary colors on it

*Drawing it perfectly on a computer is rather problematic due to the fact that monitors may not display all colors.
3. Colors that are opposite on the color wheel are called complementary. Mixing them in the right proportions gives a gray color.
4. Our vision is arranged in such a way that if the eye sees colors in the environment of some bright color, then vision gives these colors a hue complementary to the bright color (blue to flowers against an orange background, etc.). Therefore, a neutral gray surrounded by orange will appear blue to us.

*Some people say that the effect is more noticeable if you focus on one gray square and at the same time try to note for yourself what color peripheral vision perceives the adjacent gray square (I don’t know how correct this is). Someone tries to see two gray squares at the same time and compare them. Someone, on the contrary, tries to close all the other colored squares and observe the effect on only one.

5. If one additional color lies next to another, then they give each other even more “strength” and create a particularly strong contrast.

Next lesson: how to use complementary colors in practice

To the list of lessons

Full text of the lesson

What are complementary colors is discussed quite often, but the mind remains a mess. I will try to make it as simple and structured as possible.

What are the primary colors

Yellow, red and blue are called primary colors.

Three colors that are enough in painting to mix another desired color. But from other colors, yellow, red and blue cannot be mixed. Of these, you can mix all the colors, but you can’t get them.

This is a limitation of paints as a material. Theoretically, it would be possible to take other colors as the main ones, for example, red, green and blue. This is how a computer monitor works - all the colors on it are obtained from these three. But unfortunately it doesn’t work in paints 🙁

What is the color wheel

The color wheel is such a gradation from yellow to yellow through all the colors of the rainbow. In other words, it's a way to arrange all the colors.

Why did it occur to someone to place them like that? And here's why: if you take the main yellow color, and start adding a little red to it with a brush, then the yellow will become more and more orange, it will become copper-orange, and then completely fiery red. If we start adding blue to the resulting red, then we will mix many different purple colors. And if you gradually add yellow to blue, then at first you get the color of a sea wave, and then more and more frank green. And in the end we will return to yellow. Surely at first someone mixed such a color path in the form of a strip, and then it occurred to him that he could connect its ends.

What are complementary colors

And then it turns out that if you take and mix the colors that are on the circle strictly on the opposite side, you get not a bright juicy color, but gray.

Of course it's not so easy to do, to get a perfect gray gray you need to keep the proportions, but it can be done.

For example, yellow plus purple makes grey. And yellow plus blue is green. And red plus green is gray.

Optical illusions: bright color as background

Our eye works so that when we see an object of a very bright color, like purple, our eye seems to think, “Wow, the object is so purple that everything else is anti-violet.” Therefore, if we see a bright purple surrounding a speck of gray, then this gray seems to us not gray, but slightly anti-violet. What color is anti-violet? This is yellow, the opposite color on the color wheel. And with all the other colors around, this bright purple also happens, a bit of yellow is added to them.

Optical illusions: color vibration

And if we take two additional colors and put them side by side, then our eye will start to go a little crazy and rush about. “Wow, here is such a bright red and all the colors next to it are anti-red, and here is such a bright green and next to it all the colors are anti-green, wow-wow-wow!”

And then these two additional colors seem to reinforce each other, and look especially bright. This effect is called color vibration.

Besides the fact that you now know how to guess the result of mixing colors and how they will look side by side, there are more subtle applications of knowledge about the color wheel in painting.

To the list of lessons

Recent Posts

We call two colors complementary if their pigments, when mixed, give a neutral grey-black color. In physics, two chromatic lights that when mixed produce white light are also considered complementary. The two complementary colors form an odd pair. They are opposite to each other, but they need each other. Placed side by side, they excite each other to the maximum and destroy each other when mixed, forming a gray-black tone, like fire and water. Each color has only one single color that is complementary to it. In the color wheel in Figure 3, complementary colors are located diametrically to one another. They form the following pairs of complementary colors:

If we analyze these pairs of complementary colors, we find that all three primary colors are always present in them:

Just as a mixture of yellow, red and blue produces gray, a mixture of two complementary colors also becomes a gray variant.

You can also recall the experience from the section "Physics of Color", when, when one of the colors of the spectrum was excluded, all other colors, being mixed, gave its additional color. For each of the colors of the spectrum, the sum of all the others forms its complementary color. It has been physiologically proven that both the phenomenon of the afterimage and the simultaneous contrast illustrate the amazing and still inexplicable fact of the appearance in our eyes, when perceiving one or another color, at the same time of another complementary color that balances it, which, in the case of its real absence, is spontaneously generated in our consciousness. This phenomenon is very important for everyone who practically works with color. In the section “color harmony”, it was established that the law of complementary colors is the basis of compositional harmony, because when it is observed, a feeling of complete balance is created in the eyes.

Complementary colors, in their proportionally correct ratio, give the work a statically strong basis of influence. At the same time, each color remains unchanged in its intensity. The impressions produced by complementary colors are identical to the essence of the color itself. This statistical power of complementary colors plays a particularly important role in wall painting. However, in addition to this, each pair of complementary colors has other features. So, a pair of yellow - purple is not only a contrast of complementary colors, but also a strong contrast of light and dark. Red-orange - blue-green is also not only a pair of complementary colors, but at the same time an extremely strong contrast of cold and warm. Red and its complementary green are equivalent in their lightness. In order to more clearly grasp the elementary essence of the contrast of complementary colors, we present the following few exercises.

Figures 23-28 show three pairs of complementary colors and their mixtures to achieve a gray tone. The color gradation of the bands formed by mixing each pair of additional colors is determined by the gradual increase in the amount of color added to the main one. At the same time, in the center of each of these rows, that neutral gray appears, which indicates that this pair of colors is additional. If this gray is not obtained, then the selected colors are not additional. Figure 29demonstrates a composition of red and green and various modulations that occur when they are mixed. Figure 30 is made up of squares formed by mixing two pairs of complementary colors: orange and blue and red-orange and blue-green.

In many paintings built on the contrasts of additional colors, these colors are used not only in their own contrasting qualities, but also form the basis of mixtures, which, on the contrary, serve as a means of tonal alignment of works.

Nature quite often shows us such color mixing. It can be seen on the stems and leaves of red rose bushes before the buds have blossomed.

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