Color Drench Your Home in This Grounded Shade of Green

Warm, rich, and found all across the natural world, olive green is finally taking center stage

October, 2023 | By: Laura Fenton

The walls in Anastasia Casey’s dining room are papered in a vinyl grasscloth in a shade of charcoal that has olive undertones, which Casey picked up with the painted green mouldings and trim. (Photo: Lindsay Brown Photography)

A colorblock of olive paint creates a “canopy” for a simple bed in a teenage boy’s room designed by Jackie Terrell. (Photo: Lara Kimmerer)

For this Maine kitchen, Jennifer Morrison paired cabinets painted Farrow and Ball’s Lichen with green-veined soapstone countertops and sink. (Photo: Sean Litchfield)

Shades of green have been popular in interiors for the past decade. Craving more nature in their screen-filled lives, homeowners have been bringing the color of the outdoors into their indoor environments. Interior designers have embraced greens from classic emerald to soft and subtle sage. Now olive, a deep, grounded green with a hint of warmth, is taking center stage.

Olive green is popular because it’s a bit of a chameleon. The color of both army fatigues and the proverbial olive branch, olive has no fixed association. “It’s wonderful to pair with almost all other colors,” says New York City–based designer Jackie Terrell. “It’s warm, and it’s a color that’s found everywhere in nature.” Like other colors drawn from the natural world, it has a bit of a calming effect.

Olive is also part of a larger interior design trend toward rich, mid tone colors. Designers are using these colors, including olive green, in bold ways, including the color-drenching trend, in which an entire room is coated in one hue. Here’s how designers suggest you use olive in your home.

Use it for a color block.

In a recent project, Terrell designed a color block of olive green paint (Benjamin Moore’s Tate Olive) in a teen boy’s bedroom. “I wanted to designate a zone for the bed because it’s a room that also has a study area,” says Terrell. In the room, olive grounds the bed area like a canopy, but you can also try an accent wall of olive green for a similar effect.

Surround it with airy elements.

“Olive is wonderful to pair with almost all other colors, but in a bedroom, I like the way it looks with a lot of air around it, including colors like white and a warm baby blue. Too much olive can be too heavy,” cautions Terrell.

Go all-in with olive.

When you’re craving a more dramatic look, consider using olive green on the walls and ceiling, like in a recent project by Florida interior designer JuliAnne Kelly of Carrier Design Company. “We wanted this third-floor office addition to feel unique and moody, so we used a deep olive green on just about every surface,” Kelly says. The walls, trim, ceilings, and built-in desk are all painted Sherwin-Williams’s Pewter Green. Kelly says, if you are looking to create the same look, make sure to use the same paint sheen everywhere (she prefers satin) so the color is consistent throughout the space. “Olive green is practically a neutral, so don’t be afraid to go bold,” says Shannon Eddings of Shannon Eddings Interiors in Austin. “Painting the doors and trim in the same color as the walls is a great (and affordable) way to make a statement.”

Bring the outdoors in.

The color green is shorthand for nature, so Holly Hollenbeck, principal designer of HSH Interiors, turned to olive for some nature-loving clients. “The home is surrounded by a grove of large, beautiful trees and has a secluded, cozy feel. What better way to extend that feel to the indoors than using olive greens, a tapestry-feel woodsy wallpaper, and cozy, dark green velvet for the head- and footboard,” says Hollenbeck.

Try this window trick.

For a dining room, Anastasia Casey, the founder of IDCO Studio, a marketing firm for interior designers, painted the built-ins, trim, and window frames in Tate Olive by Benjamin Moore (yup, that’s the same color Terrell used—a sure winner!). “I wanted to highlight and frame the lush greenery outside the windows,” says Casey. With the trim painted green, the eye travels right out the window instead of stopping on the usual white or black frame.

Embrace a green and blue combo.

Blue and green is a classic color scheme that works well when olive is your chosen green. Eddings paired olive with various shades of blue “because that is a classic color combination that doesn’t get old.” Likewise, Jennifer Morrison of Morrison Design House in Windham drew inspiration for a project from a nearby lake (blue) and its surrounding foliage (olive green). “We wanted to emphasize the union of these two colors often seen in Maine with a green kitchen and blue living room,” says Morrison. The specific green (Lichen by Farrow and Ball) was inspired by the pine trees scattered around the property.

Work with warm whites.

Olive is a very warm-skewing green, so it pairs readily with warm-toned whites. Morrison, for example, used Alabaster White by Sherwin-Williams, a creamy ivory, on the walls beside olive green cabinets, noting, “With the cabinet color being a bit more earthy, we didn’t want a stark contrast but rather a complementary tone.”

Create a sure-to-succeed scheme.

For a bold but practically foolproof combo, pair olive with shades of purple. “As complementary colors, purple and green work harmoniously, while the purple also provides a pop of color to break up the deep green,” says Eddings. In a dining room, Eddings contrasted olive green painted elements with an antique Persian rug that features deep purple in its weave.

Trend to Try: Color Drenching

JuliAnne Kelly made the awkward angles of this attic room disappear by drenching the ceiling, walls, and trim in a single hue. (Photo: Muriel Silva)

Color drenching is a new interior trend that goes all-in with a single paint color. When you “color drench” a room, you paint everything in one hue: walls, ceiling, mouldings, doors—even the radiators. The result is a totally uninterrupted field of color with major wow factor, which is particularly effective with rich, midtone hues like olive green.

“Don’t be afraid to color drench,” says IDCO Studio’s Casey. “It adds a luxe depth to any space and can be an easy way to elevate a room as you stretch your design muscles.” And, while the trend sounds a bit maximalist, it actually can have a calming, minimizing effect on the room because it makes visual clutter and awkward corners disappear. For example, in a third-floor space with low ceilings, trusses, and weird angles, Carrier Design Company’s Kelly felt that painting the entire room was the only option if she wanted to use a bold paint color.

If you’re tempted to try the color-drenching trend, sampling is even more important than when choosing just a wall color. Always do a swatch on each surface you will be painting, says Kelly. Make sure to check the room at different times of the day, because colors will change with different lighting.