Painting my house right now. Fiiiiiiiinally finishing. It's been one of those projects that never gets finished, but it does appear that indeed this time it will happen. Mainly 'cause we're paying to have it done rather than doing it all ourselves. :) Pictures soon. I think we've settled on a color from Benjamin Moore (really good paint) called white linen for the majority of the common areas and a color called cameo for the bathrooms. There is an accent wall in the living room that is an olive green and I think we're also going to do that in cameo. Or we are going to have absolutely everything painted in cameo, (minus the bedrooms) because we're concerned that the white linen may be too white. click to enlarge-not my house- but it shows the two colors

We already bought both colors, but may not use the white linen at all. If we decide to go with only cameo, then we'll still have to choose a deeper color for the accent wall. We will possibly sell this house next year and I really just want everything to be cheerful and neutral. I see decorator interior design pictures with exotic colors like "mountain laurel ceilings, silver pine walls, and glacier brown trim" and it usually looks great....but those are typically million dollar houses... and practically any color combination looks impressive. I see very nice model homes (with our work) with ceilings the same or even deeper shades than the walls, but I'm wary of anything other than flat white on the ceilings. I remember when we originally went house hunting, the houses where people tried to be dramatic in their paint colors (almost every room a different color) -it almost always looked crappy to me and would often make the house less appealing in general. I think if you have light colored unobtrusive walls, it leaves open the imagination of the potential buyer, even if they end up painting it differently to their particular taste. If everyone had the time and money to paint and change colors with each season, then strong colors like you see in the pictures below would be more appealing to me, but as I told Rickey, overall I feel that walls shouldn't set the tone of the room so much as your decorating should, which can easily be changed as often as you feel inclined. Leave the color in that.



I love this foyer, and the colors to either side of the entry, but again, this is larger than my home and with a lot of trim work that nicely sets off the colors.

sample pictures

Dylan's room is a dark blue-not the same shade as in the nearby picture- (the shade goes really well with his furniture), our bedroom is an electric pale ice blue with pearl trim, and I'm keeping the dining room that red and gold color for now..*giggle* all this talk about subtle colors and I'm keeping a red dining room...a color that I would have never chosen. We also have another bedroom/office which is a light chocolate shade. We are pretty content with these and will decide what to do with them by the time we sell.