Home Improvements - General Points
Every home improvement situation is different. Still, there are
some general points that apply to most projects.
Some General Points
When all the woodwork in a house is the same color (cream,
white, and off-white work easily), spaces tend to visually "flow
smoothly" even if the walls of rooms are different colors. Make
sure you don't break this rule.
The colors of all rooms, which can be seen at the same time,
should look good together. Let's take a typical center hall
floor plan for a modern two-story house. The living room and
dining room are to the right and left of the entrance. The foyer
goes straight back to the family room, breakfast area, and
kitchen across the back of the house. There is probably a deck
opening off that area. Some part of all those areas can be seen
from each room, and the foyer walls continue upstairs to a hall
from which each bedroom is visible.
To continue our example with cream woodwork, the foyer and halls
might be painted a pearl gray, light tan, soft gold, or deeper
cream. The woodwork is probably a gloss or semi-gloss and the
walls and ceiling a flat paint. Since ceilings reflect light
down on people, they're usually best in cream or off-white. I
once saw a dining room with an indirectly lit octagonal tray
ceiling painted to look like creamy clouds in a peachy sunset
sky that made every dinner guest look like he or she had a
perfect complexion. It was wonderful.
The living room opening off our foyer might be a solid color
(maybe sage green or deeper tan) or it might look very handsome
with a vertically striped wall paper (cream and gray, cream and
green, or cream and tan are good possibilities). The dining room
is apt to have a chair rail. A darker color could look good
below the chair rail (again sage green, gray, gold or tan would
work) with a lighter tint of the same color above. If a solid
color were chosen for the living room, the dining room could
handle a deep red below the chair rail and a cream paper with a
narrow red stripe above it. Lots of crystal and mirrors would
look terrific in a room like that.
I'm sure you get the idea. Today's open floor plans make it
important that rooms work together.