Decorating advice please!

[RUDisney]

My friend helped us to design our first floor. She's now the department chair at a university and setup its first architecture and design school.

Anyway, she told me that the key to selecting colors for different rooms is to choose the same "type" of color for each room. I put type into quotes because I don't mean from the same color family. She meant if I selected dirtier colors, I should select all dirty colors. If I selected bright colors, I should select all bright colors, etc.

So, with that being said, my formal living room is a dirty grey khaki. It leads immediately into my dining room that is a dark nautical blue/green. The kitchen, with no door, off of the dining room is whipped pumpkin. The barroom and family room are a softer paper bag color. The common thread with each room is that all of the colors are "dirty" so you are never shocked by going from one room to another.

I hope that description helps.

The common thread in my entire first floor is hardwood flooring. The formal living room and dining room's came with the house. We installed the rest from the best-quality Bruce has to offer. The only rooms that aren't HW are the bathrooms and the kids' bedrooms. When their carpets wear out, we will replace those with HW, too.

Mouseears4life, do you agree with what I've said about color choices?

 

[lucyanna girl]

I like the description of your kitchen. Is your kitchen visible from other rooms in your house, and if so, how do you tie the rooms together, colorwise?

Black and white, being so neutral, is fairly safe in my kitchen colorwise, but I do wonder if accent colors need to be carried into other visible rooms. My kitchen is not really open to the other rooms as much as many current-era kitchens are, though.

This is fun--we need a permanent decorating thread on the DIS where people post photos and advice/recommendations.

Thanks, it isn't my dream kitchen but it looks sooo much better then when we bought this house. It had dark, ugly cabinets, no light (the french doors weren't there), scared mustard yellow counter-tops, really ugly, dingy, yellow and country blue vinyl floors and brown appliances under a popcorn ceiling. Oh, I forgot to tell you about the ceiling. We wanted something different and not too expensive. I have always loved the punch-tin ceilings you see in old buildings so I started looking for an alternative with the look. You'll laugh but we ended up using tin stamped design mobile home shirting we found at Home Depot. We had 1 X 4 boards screwed over the popcorn and then the shirting was screwed into the boards. I planed to paint it white but we liked the way the light reflects off the tin color so we left it like it was. I get more complements and it wasn't very expensive at all.

Sorry, that wasn't what you asked.

Our kitchen is separate from the rest of the house except for a single french door that leads to what most people would be using as a dining room. This room is painted an apple green color with black and white accents. We aren't using it as such right now. Our teen daughter is currently using this room as a sitting / computer room. She always has a group of friends over and needed the room worse. Another added advantage is that she and I can visit while she does homework and her computer screen faces directly toward the door so I can see at a glance what she is doing. That was really nice when she was a younger teen and just beginning to access the Internet. We have a large, long family room that has plenty of room for our dining table and china cabinet in it for the present time. My sister laughs at me because I don't always use a room as it was intended.

The apple green (should be) dining room opens via double french doors onto a living room that is painted a golden khaki color and has furniture in gold, red and a little green. Hardwood floors are in all the rooms and there are large area rugs in both of these rooms.

One more kitchen note. I wanted an island but didn't really have room. I found a small (28 by 40 inch) table that was counter height. I painted it black, added casters and used chimney flashing to cover the top. There is even a shelf under that holds open stg for potatoes, etc. For twenty five dollars I have extra prep space that can be rolled where I need it. We also cut out some of the solid wood cabinet doors and added glass.

Penny

 

[Disney Doll]

That's really interesting that your kitchen does not give off a contemporary vibe! I have a hard time picturing your description without thinking "contemporary." Would love to see photos if you're up for it!

I have no idea how to post Internet pics...I am a dinosaur!

Maybe the hardwood floors and oak cabinets make it seem less contemporary? It's a Cape Cod style house...pretty classic cape too. Center stairwell. Backsplash is tilled with tumbled marble subway tile (so it's not straight contemporary lines but more "rustic" looking, if you will, with some accents tiles in varying shades of silevry-green to darker green, but the greens land more toward the gray side of green than the yellow side of green...it's very hard to describe.