1960s plum purple is hitting the walls – sometimes full-strength and sometimes muted.
I first noticed two Plummy Dark Rooms — both in England – but at the time it was difficult to find a plum purple paint if you had the yen. Since then the hues we find among the sweet summer produce in the supermarket have hit the fan decks, upholstery fabrics and accessories. Today, some of us are craving strong color to personalize home spaces.
When searching for a purple it’s important to remember that color distortion in computer monitors can make paint color in an inspiration photo look different from the actual swatch. 
Purple walls in a dining room can be as stunning as these, particularly with high-contrast white upholstery curtains and trim. According to the source, this paint color is Ralph Lauren’s Embassy Purple — but — the Ralph swatch looks nothing like it! So adjustments sometimes must at the paint store and I always recommend taking the extra step of painting color samples on 24 x 36-inch poster board and pinning those up on the walls for a color check in any room at different times of the day.
Oddly, Ralph’s Embassy Purple might work on an accent wall in a mudroom like this one (though it appears somewhat darker). Here, the plum purple plays beautifully against peridot green walls and ivory trim.
Purple is a major theme in this foyer and hallway with a semi-sweet green trim near the ceiling and on the stairs. The color continues upstairs where we showed it used previously in a terrific play space in my Five Kid’s Room Ideas post. Check out Benjamin Moore’s Twilight Magenta – the closest match in my monitor. It’s possible to select the entire purple palette in Moore’s handy color gallery.
Purple stenciled walls may seem a bit over-the-top though the stencil is simply an accent in a highly stylized bedroom. Anyone who craves nighttime glamor might go for this magenta but it’s certainly intense, especially on the floor.
Veteran designer Stephen Gambrel used purple cleverly in this sitting room. Keeping the wall and sofa so much the same, the sofa blends into the background allowing the whitewashed floor and the white room beyond to set it off.
(Source: Javierx/flickr, Laura Casey Interiors, Smith & Vansant, weheartit.com, Steven Gambrel)
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I absolutely love the mudroom where the plum makes for fun and cozy at the same time. For me, it’s just overwhelming in the rest. Part of it is, that on my monitor, at least, the ‘plums’ are pinker or graper than I like…and I’m more of an eggplant or aubergine girl, I guess. Even if the right color, that’d be a lot to deal with, I think.
LOVE it! But, then again, I live in a lavender house and every room in it has been kissed with purple!
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gena@thehouseonlavenderhill.blogspot.com
I love purple, although I have never used a deeply saturated shade on a wall. I would like to try it somewhere, but I haven’t had the right place. Usually I use the deep purple in accents, but after visiting a cute beach house recently, I am thinking of doing something bigger. In that beach house, there was an old china cabinet painted purple! I loved it.
That last photo is a really pretty shade.
I once painted a bedroom dark plum….and it was gorgeous . Sheila