How To Make Beige Paint At Home From Scratch!

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Although beige paint has a reputation for being old fashioned and dated, the color has seen a huge resurgence in its popularity over the last few years with it just becoming more and more popular with each month that goes by. Due to this, we see a huge number of questions from both the home decor community, and the arts and crafts community who are looking to use beige and get the most out of the color.

We have seen a huge increase in the number of people reaching out and asking how to make beige paint due to it being surprisingly tricky to make your own beige paint unless you have the perfect colors ready to go. Thankfully, there are a number of different methods to make beige paint at home from scratch that are popular choices and can deliver a wide range of beige shades depending on the ratios of the paint you add.

As we have noticed so many people reaching out about making beige paint with slightly different questions, we have decided to include as many of them as possible in this article. We have our table of contents below to help you easily navigate the article and to be quickly taken to a specific section if needed.

How To Make Beige Paint!

There are simple methods to making beige paint including two colors such as adding a small amount of brown to white and there are some more complex methods of making the beige color that include four base colors. Each of them have their advantages and disadvantages though with some being very simple, and some being surprisingly difficult.

This is why some people simply opt to either buy a pre-made beige paint or to use one of the popular beige alternative colors instead of making their own beige. Unlike some other popular colors that have set ratios to mix together in a specific order, most methods for making beige either have flexible ratios or require rare colors to work well making the process a paint.

If you are a beginner looking to make beige paint, then taking one of those two options may be a quicker, easier, and cheaper route to take. If you are insistent on making your own beige at home then the method below is probably the easiest even though it requires the most base colors out of all of our featured methods.

What Colors Make Beige!

A quick and easy way to make beige is to mix cadmium yellow, burnt umber, alizarin crimson, and titanium white. They tend to be the easiest colors to make beige with even though some of them are rare for beginner painters. They work well in a number of different ratios too making it a much more forgiving method for making beige too.

You can easily find cheap sources for high quality cadmium yellow, Liquitex Professional Heavy Body Acrylic Paint, 2-oz (59ml) Tube, Burnt Umber, Liquitex BASICS Acrylic Paint, 118ml (4-oz) Tube, Alizarin Crimson Hue, and titanium white paints making this method very budget friendly. Due to beige not being a specifically defined color due to it not being pigment based, you have a large amount of freedom to tweak the end result when making your own beige paint with this method.

To some extent, you are also able to swap out some of these colors for similar ones and still get a pretty solid beige paint at the end. This offers a number of different ways to use this four color method for making beige to get the desired end result and keep costs down if you are on a budget. Keep in mind that taking a random yellow, brown, red, and white does not necessarily mean they will work well together though.

How To Make Beige Paint With Two Colors!

A popular two color method to make beige paint is to mix a brown paint with a white paint and mix the two together. A starting ratio of one part brown to four parts white is usually recommended and then test and adjust as you mix the two base colors together. Most people will find that they will have to add a touch more white after the initial mix to make beige depending on the brown that they used.

We usually recommend that you try to use raw umber for your brown but burnt umber, burnt sienna, and raw sienna can work well too as well as a number of other browns. Raw umber just tends to offer the most consistency in most cases when looking to make beige with only two colors.

When it comes to the white paint there really are a huge number of white variants on the market that you are able to use but our default is always titanium white. It works very well in most cases when trying to make beige and can usually be used for all home mage beige paint methods too without you having to switch it out for a different white.

How To Make Beige Paint Without Brown!

You are able to make beige paint without brown by mixing small amounts of orange and blue with white but the process tends to be more complex and complicated than it is worth. Making beige paint without brown paint is not very beginner friendly and getting the ratios correct for the orange and blue can be a nightmare.

We usually recommend that you stick to small amounts of cadmium orange and cerulean blue hue if you don’t have a brown paint when looking to mix beige. You really do need small amounts of the two and then once they have been mixed with each other, add them to a large amount of titanium white to gauge the end result.

You can then mix more orange and blue together and add it to your white paint if required to tweak the the hue of your beige. That said, just mixing the orange and blue in equal parts can cause problems even though it sounds easy with many people making mistakes that can easily be avoided but will totally ruin this method of making beige.

How To Make Beige Paint Look Less Yellow!

Homemade beige paints and some store bought beige paint formulas can often have a little violet paint added to them to make them look less yellow. Although this may sound strange, violet is a complementary pigment to most yellows and it can reduce the strength of the yellow in the beige paint.

The majority of the time, a very small amount of a high quality violet paint added to your beige paint will soften the yellow look and make it much more pleasing to some peoples eyes. We would highly recommend that you try this with a small amount of your beige paint in a stand alone container rather than just adding violet paint to your full tub of beige.

This is due to the vast majority of people drastically overestimating how much violet you need to add to the beige paint. You really do only need a small amount to reduce that yellow look and we recommend that you start with a few drops, thoroughly mix it into the beige and then see if you like the look before you add any more violet paint.

How To Make Beige Paint Darker!

The easiest way to make beige paint darker is to add a small amount of brown to your beige paint. You are also able to darken a beige paint by adding a very small amount of a dark red in some cases but this can be riskier with brown usually being the safer option to keep the beige color.

If you do use the method of adding a dark red paint to your beige to darken it and accidentally go too far then you are able to try and counter it with a small amount of yellow paint. This can quickly become more time and effort than it is actually worse though due to often having to rebalance the color time and time again back and forth between red and yellow.

This is why we only recommend that you use a color such as burnt umber or raw umber to darken your beige paint. It is much easier than trying any other color and a surprisingly small amount of brown paint added to a beige paint can sufficiently darken it enough to meet the needs of most people. If you have added some brown paint and are not satisfied and need it even darker then you can try adding a little bit more brown to your beige without it losing the beige look.

How To Make Beige Paint Lighter!

You can usually lighten homemade or store bought beige paint by adding a pale yellow or a white paint to the beige. You can often get away with only adding a very small amount of white to beige to lighten it but you will usually need a larger amount of yellow for any noticeable difference.

Although there are a number of other methods that you are able to try to lighten your beige paint, we would recommend that you only stick to adding white or yellow paint. The other methods tend to be too complicated in most situations, especially for a beginner with there being a high chance of ruining your beige paint if you try any other colors.

Keep in mind that the drying process for most paint formulas will often change the color of the paint due to the water or oil being removed during the drying process causing the pigment to condense. This usually darkens paints in most cases but for some colors or paints with specific ingredients it can cause them to lighten from their applied color.

How To Make Beige With Acrylic Paint!

Making beige with acrylic paints tends to be easy and mixing an equal amount of yellow, brown, and red and then adding it to a large amount of white will result in a nice beige. You are then able to adjust the final beige shade by adding more brown or red to darken it or yellow or white to lighten it until you are happy with the color.

Although a beginner will often be able to use the standard colors in an entry level set of acrylic paints, you can get a much better homemade beige paint by using cadmium yellow, burnt umber, alizarin crimson, and titanium white. These specific shades and hues tend to work very well with each other and then can easily be used to manipulate the beige paint you create to darken or lighten it too.

As we touched on earlier in the article though, you are usually able to swap out any single color from this method for a similar one and still get a good result. If you switch out two or more colors to alternatives then the end result and color of the created beige will usually end up being worse than it would otherwise be.

How To Make Beige With Oil Paint!

Making beige with oil paints can be harder than making it with other types of paint but it can still be done. Adding equal amounts of yellow, brown, and red and thoroughly mixing them before adding them to a white is usually the easiest option. You are also able to mix one part brown to four parts white and then adjust as required after mixing them with this being another relatively easy method.

When mixing oil paint it is recommended that you always try to ensure that you have the same oil medium used in each color for optimal performance. If they have different mediums then it may cause problems with the beige oil paint that you create and drying times may end up being inconsistent.

The majority of oil paints directly from the tube will either have no medium in them or have a small amount of linseed oil. This is fine for mixing together and should not cause any problems but try not to mix any oil paints that already have a solvent based medium added to them with an oil paint with an oil based medium during the mixing process.

Conclusion

That brings our article going over how to make beige paint to a close. We hope that we have been able to help you discover a method that you are able to use to make your own beige color at home but as we have tried to point out, it is more difficult than most people initially think. Beige is definitely one of the more difficult colors to make yourself and often is more effort than it is worth so just purchasing a pre-made beige paint will be a better option, especially for a beginner.