Mellow Yellow: 7 Soothing Apartments with Sunny Accents

Yellow can be a polarizing color. Some people would love nothing more than to wake up to a room full of the bright, sunny shade while others keep it out of their homes altogether. Fortunately for the rest of us, it is possible to find a happy medium.

The seven apartments featured in this post use pops of yellow - some subtle and some bold - to take the best that the color has to offer without making their living rooms look like th side of a school bus. Take a look inside these stylish, modern homes and get some ideas about how to incorporate this joyful color into your house.

The first home is a sleek and simple apartment that keeps its lines smooth and its overall color story neutral. However, woven throughout the cool beige and natural wood elements is the idea of yellow. Subtler elements include a splash of throw pillow and a few buds in a vase, while bolder choices are the long, heavy curtains and even the staircase to the upper level.

The second apartment uses much paler shades to a very soothing and almost retro effect. The buttercup yellow area rug in the living room plays with the yellow patterned throw pillow, but they don’t actually match. The result is a warm and cozy feeling that’s just mismatched enough.

In the next apartment the yellow is even more subtle. Focus in the living room area is pulled to an extra comfy-looking yellow chair piled over with pillows. The through line happens as the yellow carries over into a small side table and single pillow left on the sofa, almost (but not quite) on accident.

Yellow upholstery is an especially bold choice in this living room. A soft velour sofa in a bright, mustard yellow gives off a 70’s vibe without any of the tackiness. A casually tossed pillow in the bedroom brings that decadent color in there as well.

Yellow paint is an easy way to refresh a space that’s feeling tired. In this home, a yellow accent wall coupled with a single yellow light fixture create a mod theme. More yellow paint made its way into the bedroom and bathroom to give a unified feeling.

Another yellow sofa in this apartment is just as bright, but without the soft texture feels more modern. It works well with the black, white, and grey theme in the rest of the house. In the kid’s room and bath, a teal and orange in the same tone as the yellow creates a bit more interest.

The final apartment really takes yellow as an accent, from a yellow glass light fixture to throw pillows and a backsplash. There is no big yellow furniture or even a wall, making this perhaps the most subtle of the seven.