What Color Paint Goes With Brown Tile? (Find Out Now!)

Fun fact: I seem to have an innate talent for ending up in houses that have brown tiles. My current apartment is one of the only ones that does not have dark brown flooring. Go figure, right? As an aesthetic person, I learned that paint can make brown tiling tolerable or even beautiful. Ever wonder what paints are best for brown tiling?

Working with brown tiles usually calls for a neutral color like white, sandy beige, terra cotta, or slate gray. If you want to get a pop of color in your room, it’s best to stick to pastel colors like blues or yellows. Pinks, too, can offer a sweet feminine touch.

Brown tiles are not usually popular, and rightfully so. They are often very dramatic. Dealing with this kind of aesthetic issue means you need the right paint. So, let’s talk about it.

White is always a smart move when you’re working with brown tiling, especially if you want to give your home a rugged, masculine, and industrial look. Here, we see brown, grey, white, and wood put together in an elegant manner. It looks like an industrial kitchen, but it’s really a rustic home modeling choice.

As one of the best neutral colors out there, white will make it easier to make your home feel expansive. It’s a brightening color that can also help reflect light. No matter how you look at it, it’s a win-win.

If you have a home that you want to brighten and warm up, then a good pairing option would be to have a sandy beige wall color. Like white, sandy beige is a neutral color that works with just about any color. The only real difference is that beige doesn’t give your room a crisp, occasionally sterile look. Rather, it’s about warming things up.

Beiges are a great pick for people who want to have a European or Mediterranean look to their homes. It also can occasionally work with Oriental decor styles, but that tends to be a more counterintuitive look for many people. There’s a lot of versatility here.

Are you looking for something edgy and urban? If so, you’re going to love this. I’ve seen a lot of nightclubs with this look and it works. Cool slate greys are majorly popular among interior designers when they want to have an edgy and slightly futuristic looks.

Here, we see a bathroom that has brown tiling and a textured grey paint job. It works. In a weird way, it manages to be both rustic and industrial at the same time. While you can definitely make this paint “lean” one way or another, the truth is it’ll work well and give you modern grit with any design you choose.

Wood-style tiling is a new thing that we’re falling in love with, and here, we see it in all its splendor. With medium brown tiling or brown tiles that have a golden hue, you might want to consider adding blue and white into the picture. This light “robin’s egg blue” pairs well with the tiling and faux wood in this kitchen.

Blue offers a sunny and calming look to a kitchen that most other types of colors will not. If you like retro looks, then this will work amazingly well for you. Otherwise, you might want to try to turn this into a Scandinavian vibe.

This is another room that has a wooden floor made from tiles, but the colorations are going to remain the same. Light brown tiling works very well with greens. This is especially true with dusty green. Adding green is a naturally proven way to help add a calming effect to a room. Apparently, our caveman brains associate brown and green with our natural environment.

So, if you want something that can help you relax a bit, then this is a good way to do it. Your inner caveman will thank you for it. We suggest going for a dark green if you have a large room, or for a super light pastel green if you have a smaller room.

A light baby blue is one of the most obvious pairings for people who don’t want to do a neutral color and do want to keep things timeless. (I guess that’s why blue paint is often called “bluetral?”) Light blue has a way of cooling down red tones that can be found in some browns while also highlighting golden tones that you might want to bring out.

Everyone seems to like blue. Blue is that one color that you can always rely on when you want to have compliments. It’s a gorgeous color and has a wide range of shades that work well with it, browns of all types included. Pastel light blue tends to be even better since you get that extra light reflection in there.

So, this designer decided to do something a bit unusual. He got brown and yellow tiles that look like tiny strips of wood kludged together. That’s neat. But, the truth is that you don’t need to have to have that yellow splash of color to make it work. Brown tiles and yellow paint just work well together.

Much like robin’s egg blue, yellow and brown work well together as a retro color scheme. Fans of the 60s and 70s are going to find this look to be epic. Oh, and if you’re looking for a way to warm up a home? This is it. Yellow is famous for being able to add a level of coziness to a place.

If there is one way to get an exotic and Mediterranean look to your home, it’s pairing brown tiles with terra cotta paint. It’s gorgeous. Its warm look is a great way to add some old world glamour to a home, make your home into an Island paradise, and it also can play into a rustic Southwestern vibe too. Versatility, thy name is terra cotta.

People who want something that is great with Western looks will want it. Of course, it also has the ability to add a way to give your room a fiery look. If you want to add a little bit more openness to your home, this can be a bit too dark, so you’re going to want to add some whites and creams.

I know I’ve been touting the whole “Mediterranean” look a lot, but the truth is that brown tiling isn’t just a Spanish thing or a Western thing. You can find brown tiling in almost every culture’s traditional housing in the world. In Ireland, dark brown tiling is always paired with one color: emerald green. Hence, it’s the “Emerald Island” of home design too!

Dark green and brown give your home a stately appearance that also has a nice woodsy vibe to it. If you have a home bar area, I strongly suggest this paint and tile pairing. Oh, and make sure to have Father Ted on the TV, too!

Related Questions

What can you do if you cannot match your floor tile’s color?

Cracking a floor tile and needing a replacement is one of the worst things that can happen to people who love a crisp floor. The best thing you can do is try to get as close to the tile color as possible. Or, if you’re willing to get crafty, you can bring the tile into a Home Depot and match the color to a paint. Then, paint the tile and install it. Problem solved.

What shade of brown should you choose for your tiling?

This is all up to you. Many people tend to assume that dark brown tiles are starting to go out of style, simply because it is so deeply tied to traditional layouts. More people are into light brown these days, simply because it helps make a home look more open, clean, and beautiful. Even so, any shade of brown will give your home a timeless look.

Are dark brown tiles outdated?

Yes and no. Dark brown tiles were once far more popular than they are now. They may have been iconic in the 60s and 70s, but the truth is that they are not really outdated. At least, they’re not outdated in the way that honey oak is. This shade of tile comes back in style every so often.With dark brown tiling, how you work the tiles into your own home design matters just as much as the color itself. It’s possible to make them look super modern, or super retro depending on your accessories.