Painting a bathroom this colour increases your home’s value by …

Colour psychology probably doesn’t affect your life on a day-today basis — until you’re trying to sell your home, that is. The colour of your walls can actually raise or lower the value of your property, a dollar amount that changes annually along with the year’s colour trends. Zillow recently examined over 32,000 photos of sold homes around the U.S., dissecting how certain colours impact their closing price. Here are the dos and don’ts of paint colours in 2017, as originally reported by MarketWatch.

DO:

Keep it light. “Painting walls in fresh, natural-looking colours, particularly in shades of blue and pale grey, not only make a home feel larger, but are also neutral enough to help future buyers envision themselves living in the space,” said Zillow’s chief economist, Svenja Gudell. Homes with blue bathrooms, specifically lighter shades of blue or periwinkle, brought in roughly $5,440 more than expected. Similarly, light blue-grey kitchens sold for $1,809 more, while natural hues like oatmeal and pale grey consistently overperformed.

DON’T:

While a yellow kitchen brought in $1,100 more in 2016, the sunny hue is now lowering your home’s value by an estimated $820. Similarly, walls with no colour at all (read: stark white) had the most negative impact on sale prices. “Homes with white bathrooms, for instance, sold for an average of $4,035 less than similar homes,” noted Zillow. Finally, terracotta walls continued to slash a home’s value by $2,031 — a $1,000 increase from last year.