The best yellow paint colors, according to design pros

If you’ve been feeling sunny-side up lately — at least when it comes to your paint color choices — you’re not alone. Yellow is having a moment. “We’re going to start seeing yellow in the next year and a half, two years,” said Jordan Slocum, co-founder of the Brownstone Boys, a design and renovation firm in Brooklyn.

Today’s shades, though, are not the yellows of yore. “Years ago, I had a living room painted this kind of sunny yellow color, and I kind of abandoned it,” said Paula Wallace, founder of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her current shade of choice is decidedly richer - an almost marigold hue that is “not too whimsical or flimsy.”

Slocum, too, went deep in his bedroom; his version of yellow whiffs at Dijon and is “really beautiful and calming.”

To do yellow right (no caution tape, daffodils or Easter chicks, please), designers suggest avoiding buttery shades that “drift into ’90s French country territory,” said Emily Vaughan, a designer in Bethesda, Maryland. Instead, try an earthier color.

And “make sure you get a sample,” says Slocum. “I don’t really believe in accent walls … but maybe just try one wall, see how you’re liking it, and then from there you can always continue it through other walls or do a full drench.”

Here, designers share their favorite modern yellows, ranging from creamy, pale shades to deeply saturated citrus hues.

When a windowless basement home gym in Vienna, Virginia, needed a jolt of energy, designer Laura Hildebrandt opted to bring in a bit of sunshine of sorts on the ceiling. “I was really trying to think of how to bring in some natural light and make it interesting and not just four boring walls,” said Hildebrandt, the founder of Interiors by LH. Leaving the beams exposed helped, by making the ceilings feel taller. But the true wow moment came from a coat of Sherwin-Williams’s Nugget, inspired by a shade in some fabric in an adjacent room. “It’s a bright, sunny color,” she said. “I always try to make sure [a paint color] is something that is natural and can really be easily found in nature because our brains understand nature.”

Slocum, co-author of the new book “For the Love of Renovating,” says he struggled to find just the right shade for his bedroom. “We tried many different iterations throughout the years, but we never really felt like it was our sacred space — a place that we can turn everything off and just relax,” he said. But during a trip to the United Kingdom last summer, he and his husband and business partner, Barry Bordelon, fell in love with a calming shade of yellow. “We really felt like this yellow was speaking to us.” They tried Farrow & Ball’s Duster — which he describes as an aged yellow, and similar to the one they experienced in England — on one wall, then another. “Then, next thing you know, we did a full drench.”

Kishani Perera, a designer in Los Angeles, gravitates to yellow for good reason: “I mean, it’s just instant joy,” she said. “You cannot have yellow in the space and not walk in and just smile.” Perera recently worked with clients who feel the same way, so she carried similar shades of the color throughout their home. That began with the front door, which is painted a very peppy Sunflower by Benjamin Moore. “It was so bold, and the exuberance of this color, it just brought so much life to the house.” It’s an alluring “deep, rich yellow that, when you’re driving down that street, you can’t even miss it,” Perera said.

Diana Byrne, a designer in Rye, New York, likes the “unapologetic and edgy” Citron from Benjamin Moore, she said in an email. She used it in a lacquer finish in this dining room and bar area to contrast with the bar’s oak millwork and matte counter. “It’s an upbeat, vivid and clear shade, even though the undertones are warm,” she added.

Designer Bridget Tiek’s young daughter chose a “loud and proud” yet almost moody shade, Babouche by Farrow & Ball, for her Baton Rouge bedroom. “This color is incredible because it’s a deeper yellow, and throughout the day as the light changes, the color changes completely,” Tiek said.

Adam Ford, of the Tennessee firm A.A. Ford, went with a softer, creamier shade in a lake house bedroom, to match the Raoul Textiles fabric in the window treatments. “We wanted to bring in some of that warmth, but not in a way that was too saturated or too buttery,” he said. The choice: Mellowed Ivory by Benjamin Moore, applied in a strié finish over a base coat of the brand’s White Chocolate. “The bedroom is north facing, so they get some east sunlight in the morning and then west in the evening. So it’s kind of perfect: In the morning it’s cooler, and then in the evenings it’s a little more golden, kind of what you would want it to be as the sun goes down.”

In a basement laundry room with zero natural light, doing a load of whites could easily feel like dungeon drudgery. Vaughan countered the effect with the “sunny, cheerful” Bombazine by Farrow & Ball alongside Morris & Co. wallpaper. “Using yellow in large doses takes a certain confidence, and I always appreciate a bold statement,” Vaughan said in an email.

“I really wanted to infuse something yummy and citrusy on our ceiling in there in our dining room,” said Betsy Lanphier, founder of Philadelphia firm Elizabeth Swift Interior Decoration, of her family’s home in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. “That’s such an otherwise formal space with the picture molding, and dining rooms can have that feel of ‘stuffy.’” Her zingy solution: Citrona by Farrow & Ball. “We had stark white walls, and we wanted that pop to really just add to the ambiance. The ceiling, that light just glows off of it. It rides that line of yellow and green, but it’s very cheery and has a level of sophistication to it, I think because it edges into that chartreuse.”

Kathryn O’Shea-Evans is a design and travel writer in Colorado.