I was looking through the pages of some books about interior design in order to get an idea of a color to paint the living room. We had an idea in mind when we bought the house, I wanted the room to be a "stone pink" color which would be a slightly gray/pink drab color, but in my infinite wisdom decided to wait until the wood was done to see what effect that would have on the room.
It is good that we waited because any shade of pink would look weird against the wood.
As I flipped through the pages of the three or four books that I have I am noticing that NONE of the woodwork in any of these pictures is actually looking like wood! It is all painted white. This of course is great for the decorator because it allows any color to be used to paint the walls and some of the rooms look fantastic, but it doesn't help me at all!
The living room looks very "federal" even though it is really Greek revival. The molding is very simple but massive. Those planks around the windows and doors are 9 inches wide. If we go with Greek revival wall colors then we are limited to pale green, gray, pale blue, gray, lilac, gray, beige, gray, white and of course another shade or three of gray. I don't want too much green throughout the house but we are limited to colors that look good with darker woodwork. A shade of green may be our only choice. We have that grey marble fireplace to take into consideration too.
We plan on painting the parlor gold and having a gold floral wallpaper below a chair rail but that may change after that wood is finished. The dining room was going to be green but I think that idea has been put on hold. The wood molding can be anything we want in that room because all the original stuff was removed and currently there isn't any. I have to make it all myself from new planks and will style it off the living room molding since it is so simple. The accent color in that room is black which is in the fireplace mantle and the curtains we have. I guess we should wait until I put the fireplace in and the curtains up before we decide on a color.
Oh decisions, decisions...... I think we will paint all second floor woodwork white, it is so much easier that way!
From log house to farmhouse. Farmhouse to townhouse. Townhouse to apartment house. Apartment house to crack house. Crack house to our house. Our house to our home.
Decisions, decisions. Try the Benjamin Moore color viewer thingy. Even in the free version, you can change the trim to whatever color you want ... they don't have a natural wood option, but you could pick a brown that matches the color pretty close. Then evaluate wall colors.
ReplyDeleteYou may have a man's aversion to pink, but what about "rose" for the living room walls? It would be nice with a gray fireplace. Think of it as "light red" instead of "pink" and you may like it.
ReplyDeleteI don't have an aversion to pink on the walls of a Victorian home as long as it isn't "Hot Pink". Pink was actually my idea because it would have worked with the fireplace. I also wanted to put some faux panels on the walls painted in the same Italian style marble BUT that was when we figured that we would just do a cosmetic makeover of the room and paint the woodwork white. (Some time ago in a galaxy far, far away.) BUT that was before we found the boarded up window that still had the original wood finish. The original wood finish was darker than we are going to have it. The windows have interior shutters too so the problem is that the woodwork is domineering. There are three windows and two large doors in that room each carving out areas that are 4 ft.wide X 9 ft.high. I'm limited to earth tones pretty much. Of course I could always paint the wood!
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