Traditional Decorating in Sunny Yellow

Long a favorite color for traditional design, yellow kicks up high spirits in any style’s decorating. This 2011 D.C. Design House dining room gets its youthful glow with daubs of yellow. Though the walls are kept a creamy neutral, yellow isn’t confined to accents. It blankets the floor through an inventive paint treatment that transforms the wood into jaunty yellow-and-cream diamonds.

Interior design: Camille Saum

Decorate with Sunny Yellow Orbs

The best decorating features themes that are as subtle as a texture or a shape. Round shapes in sunny yellow replay in this dining room as plates artfully arranged on the wall and in the china cabinet, and again as circles of yellow on the chair backs.

Interior design: Camille Saum

Splash of Yellow

Classic dining chairs are covered in a fun-loving yellow vinyl for a rain-slicker look. The shiny vinyl covers only the front backs and seat cushions. It’s fashionably paired with a yellow floral linen on the chair-back insets.

Interior design: Camille Saum

British Colonial Color

A grand antique Anglo-Indian bed launched this master bedroom’s traditional design, and a coat of sunny yellow paint on the walls anchored the exotic island feel. Perhaps the most interesting design treatment is the delicate custom Indian paisley stencil that finishes the walls in place of crown moldings.

Interior design: Jennifer Garrigues

A Cacophony of Color

An antique Spanish needlepoint rug defines the essentially sunny character of this English country-style sitting room. Though the decorating pulsates with patterns in rose, green, and other garden-fresh colors, it’s the yellow underfoot that has first and final word, grounding the space in optimism.

Interior design: Ellen Hamilton

A Warm Welcome

Lacquered yellow walls impart bracing brio to a guest room in the 2011 Hampton Designer Showhouse. Cool turquoise bedding and upholstery fabrics take down the temperature a degree or two, while a swirl-pattern lemon-and-gray area rug repeats the sunny color in a sophisticated combo that makes it more subtle.

Tip: Lacquer yellow paint on the walls to amp up a guest room or home office.

Interior design: Arden Stephenson

Yellow Sophisticate

Rich yellow-gold is a favorite go-to hue in the lexicon of traditional design. In this living room, it is used to an elegant end with a posh cut-pile area rug, embroidered silk draperies, and damask pillow coverings.

Interior design: David Herchik

Soften Walls with Yellow Fabric

Gracious yellow-gold continues to the dining room, where the walls are softened with a Fadini Borghi fabric featuring a yellow-gold floral on a gray ground.

Tip: For ultra-elegance, cover windows and walls in the same richly colored embroidered silk fabric.

Interior design: David Herchik

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Yellow Infuses the Office

A home office’s dark wood trim and Tudor architecture required a counterpoint of light to bring the room to life. This traditional design in the 2011 Pasadena Showcase House of Design took a soak in sunshine, with walls and ceiling painted warm yellow and windows covered in a sophisticated hand-blocked yellow fabric.

Interior design: Julie Kays

Temper Yellow’s Cheer

Too much yellow in a room’s design can sour the cheer. With the walls brought to a yellow lather, this home office regains composure with a quiet yellow-and-cream Mahal rug and a yellow-and-gray blocked linen on the chair. A leopard-pattern gray velvet on the ottoman updates the traditional design. A collection of framed intaglios reduces the expanse of yellow wall.

Tip: Fold in gray to temper a vibrant color.

Interior design: Julie Kays

Insouciant Accents of Yellow

Like a lemon drop candy, yellow perks up the senses in this Cape Cod guesthouse (just behind the California owners’ summer home). The bleached wood walls and ocular window are brought into sharp focus with a smattering of lemon yellow accenting the bookshelves, side table, and window seat. A pair of garden stools repeat the happy hue.

Interior design: Maureen Footer

Throw in Some Yellow

In the guest quarters’ sleeping area, a single decorative throw pillow covered in lemon yellow on each of the twin beds is just enough accent color to declare the palette a success.

Interior design: Maureen Footer

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Pretty Yellow Drapery Panels

Da Vinci’s observation that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication holds steadfast in today’s decorating. Simple pleated curtain panels in solid-hue yellow make a stylistic splash in this traditional dining room.

Interior design: Julie Massucco Kleiner

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Old-World Burnished Yellow Walls

In one of New York City’s best apartment buildings, an old-world design is articulated in the living room against a backdrop of warm yellow-gold walls. The traditional color is an appropriate canvas for showcasing a stellar collection of 19th-century art including the Matisse hanging above the fireplace.

Interior design: Marcy Masterson

A Yellow View

Manhattan’s historic Osborne Building, New York’s original luxury apartments, required a decorating update respectful of the architecture’s age and integrity. The entry’s walls were enriched with warm terra-cotta Venetian plaster, while mellow yellow-gold beckons in the family room beyond.

Tip: Even when adjoining rooms are visible, it’s still safe to change colors from one room to the next if you pick a palette of neighboring hues from the color wheel. Orange-red and yellow are next-door neighbors, guaranteed to live in harmony.

Interior design: Marcy Masterson

Warm up the Walls

This shade of burnished yellow-gold on the family room walls hits the optimum degree of warmth to provide an ideal foil for English chintz draperies in earth tones. The old-world design is as livable as it is timeless.

Interior design: Marcy Masterson

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Mellow Yellow

Like any other color, yellow can be shaded to a quieter, less exuberant tone. That’s the design choice for the palette of this conservatory in the 2011 D.C. Design House. Pale yellow accents ensure that the soothing mood of an earthy gray and stone palette remains serene.

Interior design: Barry Dixon

Add Color through Art

Framed yellow artwork gently lifts the neutral conservatory from its earthy depths, into the sun. Ten art pieces titled Memories of France, by Paule Marrot, hang inside wall panels, on either side of a table lamp made of antique iron chain.

Interior design: Barry Dixon

Yellow Blaze in a Beige Room

A single bright vase on the conservatory’s classical stone-carved mantelshelf breaks up the traditional room’s abiding beige. That one touch of vibrant color is the only vivid accent. Other yellows go pale, as with the pastel-hue ottoman, which is given classical character with a Greek key motif created with nailheads.

Interior design: Barry Dixon

Happy Go Yellow

Pale yellow paint on the walls creates an upbeat ambience in the foyer of this Hollywood home on Sunset Strip. The lighthearted hue is counterbalanced with the weighty glamour of an Italian chandelier and the glitz of a marble-and-gilt Empire console table.

Tip: Enrich the palette and the design’s cachet by slipping a bright red Tabriz rug into the pale yellow envelope.

Interior design: Timothy Corrigan

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More Color Ideas

See more color ideas—including the instant pick-me-up that orange can provide a space. Enjoy our presentation on Decorating with Orange.