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How many basic paint colors do you have in your home?


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I have finished picking most of the colors for the paints and realized that every room will be some variation of a red or yellow/gold except for a for a small area in the dinette where I will be mixing in some purple with the red and gold for the whole tuscan vineyard look.

 

My oldest dd's house is a lot like mine in that the colors are all from the warm side of the spectrum and flow. My brother's house has one palate on the first floor and another on the second.

 

My neighbor though had a radically different color in every room and I find the effects extemely jarring. Her house was on the market for well over a year and I went so far as to tell the agent it was becuase of the paint colors. She had battleship gray, navy blue, hunter green, chocolate, black, bright yellow and orange. I don't know if it was that they colors were so dark or so diseperate but I didn't find it pleasant.

 

Now that my kids are watching HGTV I see a wide variety of styles and I am just wondering what most normal (not people on tv) do. What colors do you have in your house?

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I have a green in the livingroom, a different green in DS's room (light, sage-type greens), and a very very pale green in the bathroom.

I have a purplish/grayish in the kitchen. The hallway is a very very pale version of the kitchen, almost white.

I have a blue in the school room and a different blue in other kids' room.

I have a brownish/tan in my room and a lighter version in the other bathroom.

 

So four separate basic colors (though the greens would look dreadful if they were even close to each other, but you can't see them at the same time!).

 

Personally, I love using a variety of colors. I was even hesitant to use any shade of green or blue more than once! I just didn't want the other choices:) Walking from one room into another of a completely different color is wonderful to me! But they have to match nicely.

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My kitchen and dining room are a darker red,

Living room beige decorated with green

Bedroom & Master Bath green

Guest bath - green

 

These are all colors that go together and I use all these colors to decorate in all the rooms. I like it to flow too, although I don't feel it has to be the same in each room.

 

Upstairs is beige expect for the kids' rooms. Blue for boy and pink for the girls, of course!!!

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We have several colors, but they are all very complementary (except for dd's room, which was just painted this past year -- it's more "her" and less the rest of the house). The colors coordinate well from room to room, and you could pretty much mix and match our furniture / rugs / paint from anywhere (except the kids' rooms) around the house.

 

I agree that it can be very jarring when the colors of the main living areas of a house don't flow well.

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a sage green in my kitchen/dining area, gold in our den, a light tan/beige in the hall, a tan in our bedroom with red in the bathroom, light blue in son's bedroom, pink in the girl's room, a golden yellow in the main bathroom. It's a lot of different colors, but it seems to "come together". I have a friend that has Crayola crayon colors all through her house. It's really bold to me, but she'll live in that house a long time, so for her it's fine.

 

HTH -

 

Molly

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We have a lot of different colors, but we love color. We have tried to keep the same tones throughout the house, the only miss is our living room which is a light grey, but it's a cooler grey instead of the warm we wanted. After two tries though we're living with it for now.

 

Each room is a different color. Classroom is gold with one red wall. Ds' room is two grey walls and two red walls. Our bedroom is a light brown, almost the color of chocolate milk. We've kept everything uniform with white trim and doors throughout.

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The colors coordinate well from room to room, and you could pretty much mix and match our furniture / rugs / paint from anywhere (except the kids' rooms) around the house.

 

That's what I am hoping for. Since we move things around a lot and we have an open floor plan it is nice if everything coordinates and can be mixed and matched.

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We have several colors, but they are all very complementary (except for dd's room, which was just painted this past year -- it's more "her" and less the rest of the house). The colors coordinate well from room to room, and you could pretty much mix and match our furniture / rugs / paint from anywhere (except the kids' rooms) around the house.

 

I agree that it can be very jarring when the colors of the main living areas of a house don't flow well.

 

Same here. When I was first choosing colors, I found samples that were grouped together as a family, and I've gradually painted the rooms those colors.

 

I also agree about too many colors being jarring. But colors that are drastically different intensities can also be unsettling. I don't care for a very pale and then a very intense color in adjoining rooms. So I also thought about that when choosing colors.

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I love color and since we had to paint before we moved in, I put a lot of thought into our colors. We've never decided on our public area colors until it was time to move, and then we had to do neutrals. Anyway, I picked our curtains first and used that for our color palate.

 

Our living and dining room and entry are mostly a light goldenrod with a burnt orange accent wall. Our kitchen is the same light goldenrod and olive green. They look great together and we've received many complements. Our bedroom color is a lighter orange with a little more pink...it looks like it could almost be a Santa Fe color, which is not what we were going for at all. We don't like it as much but it's tolerable. The light goldenrod goes down the stairs (split-level) and our laundry room at the bottom of the stairs is a dark plum. That's as far as we've gotten until we finish our basement. The kids rooms are pink and blue...but they're far enough down the hall that they don't clash with anything. And all of our ceilings are a lighter version of the light goldenrod--it feels like we have white ceilings but it's much warmer and not as stark.

 

I think one can use a variety of colors and have them be cohesive and harmonious. But just randomly picking bold colors doesn't usually work unless you have a really good sense of color. I don't. :)

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Downstairs, all the rooms except our office are "silver sage," a color from Restoration Hardware. The office is green...I don't know the name, but it's a dark green; the adjoining bathroom has wallpaper that has a green and red stripe in it (plus other colors but I don't want to confuse you, lol). All the windows except for the breakfast nook have white sheer curtains.

 

Upstairs, the bedrooms are different colors, but they are all in the cool range, not the warm, and the game room, my bedroom, and the adjoining bathroom/dressing room are different shades of blue.

 

Having completely different colors in every room would feel sort of psycho to me, lol.

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I have 3 complimentary shades of warm neutrals (tans/golds) and a couple accent walls in a rust color - it all coordinates. I would also find it jarring to have such different colors.

 

Same here. Ours came from Lowe's and is called "Amberwove" and the other is called "Ambertone." The only room differently painted is the guest room, we went with sea green - can't remember why.

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I have a deep burgundy in the library...I mixed the color myself so I could get exactly the shade I wanted. My oldest son's room is medium green. The ceiling is green with silver shimmer over it. We'll be re-doing it soon because we just switched the kids rooms. Kids get total choice on colors for their rooms.

 

Those are the only rooms I have done right now. I plan on doing the kitchen black, white and red (the appliances will be red) ...it will definitely clash with the library, which it is next to. Dh's and my bedroom will be a dark blue...I wanted to give dh a choice.

 

 

I'm going to paint one room avocado...maybe the mudroom, which is next to the schoolroom. Will probably do the schoolroom a pumkin-y, cinnamon-ish orange

in the schoolroom. These are two of my favorite colors.

So...green, orange, red, blue.

 

Everything will clash when I am done...but I will totally love it.

 

 

Because of where we live, we will probably paint everything an off-white before putting it on the market (if we sell).

 

ETA: When we were looking at houses to buy, my very favorite was one with all sorts of crazy colors...I remember the real estate agent saying the house we ended up moving into was move-in ready as far as decor, and the other house we looked at would need lots of work (as far as decor). One of the rooms was this really neat deep brown. Another was blue with painted stars (a kids room). One was eggplant. Funny thing was...we loved the decor of the other house, and hate the dated eighties decor of this house. The other house had black mold though...re-doing decor was preferable to trying to get rid of black mold!!!

 

ETA2: I'm not even going to try to describe what is in the rooms we haven't yet painted...it's cringeworthy...not to mention that the previous owners were very Irish, and the outside of the house was white, green, and red. And the back door has white, green, and red panes of glass!

 

ETA3: And every color is very bold...nothing subtle or muted. I love bold color in a house! Of course, I wear muted colors...:D

Edited by chaik76
I meant schoolroom, not kitchen as pumpkiny orange!
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I wish I could do brighter or darker shades than I can in my dark, arctic environment. It doesn't help that we are in a low place surrounded by tall trees that block natural light - if we were up on one of the mountains my palette would be wider. Also, I like blue, any & all shades of it, the best. I made the mistake of listening to my mom as she went on and on about how it would feel cold if I painted it such a cool color.

 

Considering that, the colors in my house are a very, very light sage green in the open living area with the back wall that joins to the kitchen (did I mention it's "open"?) a light buttery yellow. The idea with this was to be able to accent with a deep claret red, deep plum and other plum variants, and/or persimmon/terra cotta and darker sage greens. This was all based on a set of materials with a very light yellow-cream background, sage vines/leaves, with a floral print in those colors. Other materials in this set were just stripes of the dark colors and sage vines on the yellow-cream background. I wanted to leave myself the option to redecorate (throws, rugs, slipcovers, etc.) within this palette. I like doing the living area with it's light sage walls with darker sages, dark plums, and varying lighter plums for a green/purple room.

 

I want to repaint it all some type of blue, though. I'm just not willing to do all that paining again just yet.

 

The main bathroom is still white and has yet to be decided on. Bright lime green? Bright purple? Aqua blue? I like color. Maybe I should save the crazy colors for the laundry walk-through, or the garage. ;)

 

My dd's room came with 2 pink walls (think Pepto-Bismal) which she loved at the time and they are still that way. G*d help us if we let her loose with permission to pick paint colors herself. My boys' room was a very cool super-light yellow (like if you mixed neon yellow highlighter with white), but my oldest ds, who was 3 at the time, wanted it to be the same color as the bright green guy from Bob the Builder. Kids pick their own rooms here, so bright crayola green it is. It's actually a lighter green with a color called "clove" sponged over it so the dark color wouldn't be solid, but it still looks DARK in there, especially in the winter. Hate it. I have chosen a muted chambray blue for their room with dark claret red accents - this will match the quilts and comforters I want for them from PBT (the baseball & football ones).

 

My room is white w/ an "accent wall" the color of deep merlot. It came this way. I like the color, but it's a messy paint job and I like blue better, so I've got some other blues in mind for my room. The master bath will probably end up in the cool spectrum too - blue, dusty aqua, bluish sage green, or grayish lavendar.

 

It's late, can you tell? I'm explaining the paint colors in my house and the reasons behind them in absurd detail. :P I think it's time for bed.

Edited by Annabel Lee
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Guest Virginia Dawn

The living room is a pale sand color with white trim and ceilings, I am planning to spread this to the dining room and kitchen also. The master bedroom is a very light sunny green with white trim, I want this for the bathroom as well.

 

Upstairs is just all white.

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I love color! White walls are just so boring. Here's what we have:

 

main living areas (living, dining, kitchen, family) is a goldish yellow, with several dark brown accent walls

 

our bedroom is a sage-ish green color with a portion of one wall accented in dark red

 

the guest room is bright yellow

 

the playroom is purple with a white stripe going around the room

 

the guest bathroom and the laundry room is sky blue

 

the master bathroom is dark red

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We're still kind of mismatched right now.

 

Most of my downstairs (hallway, family room, dining room) is the same coffee with cream color it was when we bought the place. It's warm, but I'm likely to paint it a buttery light yellow at some point, to better hold the light and blend with our belongings/other rooms. We use fiestaware, so I tend to choose tints or shades of those colors. Our kitchen is red, and I love it.

 

The small room with our piano and library is dark burgundy, which I will paint a lighter color at some point.

 

The kids' playroom is a bright green. It was dark rust when we bought it, and was being used as the dining room, but it was always pretty cramped. I tried to brighten it up, but it was a fail. One of those, "I saw it on someone else's blog and it looked amazing!" things. We moved our eating area to the other end of the house. I have come to really dislike the color, but it's just the playroom, yk? If we put the house on the market I'll repaint it.

 

When you come upstairs, you're in our office/hs room. It's a warm pumpkin color. Our bedroom is cranberry red, our daughter's is pale robin's egg blue, and our sons' room will eventually be a pale tea green. The colors seem to work together, more or less.

 

The only room I really, really hate is our bathroom. The previous owner did that textured sand paint. I think it's going to be a huge pain to redo.

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I can't imagine having only a few colors! Ours is many colors but all tied together with white trim and grayish floor coverings. Sunroom is mostly white with a deep blue on two walls. Kitchen is white with a mauve color on two walls. Sitting room is a deep purple. Foyer/stairs is a sage green. Living room a pale yellow. Upstairs, the bathroom is light blue. Kids' room is pale yellow. Our room is blue and gray.

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We are a yellow/gold family with some touches of green for most of the rooms. The funny thing is we just repainted the kids rooms with the colors they picked themselves. Ds chose a deep, golden yellow and dd chose a bright, sunshine yellow. Independent of each other and with no assistance from me.

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We are completely boring beige. :001_huh:

Well, the boys' room is blue and the girls' room is pale pink and pale purple, but everything else in the house is "real estate showing beige"!

 

This is partly b/c I haven't been able to choose colors in 5 years and partly because thinking about the task with our vaulted ceilings, gazillion windows and pretty wood trim makes me want to vomit. We also have a completely open floor plan so, other than the bedrooms and bathrooms, there are no individual rooms.

 

I've always felt that when (if) we paint, we'll use several neutral colors in the gray-green/gray-blue family.

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6 colors, if I'm counting right -- some are different shades of the same color:

 

LR-Yellow

DR- Brick

Kitchen - I don't count it because there is so little paint in the room. The tiled backsplash has a lot of green.

DS hallway: green

DS bath: pink

DS playroom: green

Basement FR: green (any guesses as to DH's favorite color????)

Office: Burgundy

MBR: brown

DD's room: yellow

DS's room: blue

US bath: yellow

US hallway: yellow (same as LR)

 

So we have greens, yellows, pink, brick/burgundy, brown, & blue.

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I also like the monochromatic look for main level, open floor plans. Ours is a warm beige (think cafe-au-lait).

 

I do have a good bit of wood trim and architecture to delineate spaces from one another, and I have painted ceilings in some rooms. On our main level, the ceiling in the music (original dining) room is a very light sea green, to somewhat separate the space. I use deeper shades of that color in other decor accessories on that level, so it ties together. I love painted ceilings!

 

Upstairs the hallway and master suite are basically the same color, but each kid has his own color choice, with approval. No neons, nothing too too dark (though sorta-dark is okay). But those areas are not what I consider "public" so it's really okay that they don't flow.

 

Our open, semi-finished, fully functional basement walls are painted all the same color, it's a warm light brown that warms up the space.

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I have not had a chance to get to the kids bedrooms and yet and dh painted them a basic beigey neutral color when we moved in. The kitchen is a Cleary sage, the front room adjacent to the kitchen is blue, the bathrooms are a butter yellow, the main areas are New England yellow and our bedroom is Eucatlyptus leaf. My dd wants her room pink which I will get to soon. what I am finding in model homes they have 3 colors. One for most of the house with one room in a different variation of the main color and the master br tend to be in the greyish family.

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creams (vanilla as my mil calls it) and wine shades of purples and reds and navy blues in the downstairs

 

upstairs cream in the halls

 

bedrooms are pale pink (girls room), denim blue (younger boys room w/ cowboy theme that matches the cowboy mural in the hall bath next to their room), primary yellow and navy blue (music room off the older boys room that is all white (haven't painted that one yet.)

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I love color, but I love it in small doses. Our upholstered furniture is colorful rather than neutral and we have lots of needlework and other artwork on the walls. So the walls throughout the larger rooms of the house are pretty much neutral.

 

In the open floorplan living area the walls are a soft khaki/gold/cream color. The kitchen pantry walls are bright screaming Mango because I love to see that little jolt of pure color when I open the door.

 

Heading down the hall...the kids' bathroom is aqua with aqua & lime green decor. I insist on "clean" colors for bathrooms, no browns or beiges. Personal quirk. :lol:

 

Son's room is medium denim blue, a color he chose when he was 3yo. He really wants it repainted, so when DH gets around to it that color will change. It will become dark khaki or mocha if I get my way. If DS gets his way it will probably be hunter green or orange...I think DH will side with me on this one.

 

Daughter's room has mocha walls with black and white decor. Very sophisticated.

 

Laundry room is cool, clean periwinkle blue...another little jolt of color for me.

 

Master bedroom is another soft cream/beige/gold color and all our bedding is in similar shades with only a bit of pink, rose, and green for accents here and there. I wanted the whole room to say "warm, calm, and comfortable" and it does. Our master bathroom is a medium grayed-down blue with hints of purple.

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Oh funny! I just posted about choosing new paint colors for my family area of kitchen/dining room/living room. We have 2 shades of green, 2 shades of yellow, one shade of orange-reddish, one neutral beige, and 1 aqua blue. Considering we don't have lots of rooms, this makes for a very colorful house but without mixing the colors so the house doesn't seem disorienting.

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The halls, living room, master, laundry room, and office are all beige. The bathrooms both have wallpaper that are basically beige (not the same wallpaper in both baths though).

 

The dining room/school room is a dark sage green while the kitchen and hearthroom we just painted a terra cotta-ish color. I wanted to paint it a robins egg blue, but dh didn't like it and it would have meant painting the dining room too as it would not have looked good with the green. The terra cotta shade complements the green of the dining room and the beige in the rest of the house keeps it all pretty neutral.

 

The kids have their bedrooms painted whatever color they want that coordinates with their bedding which means blue for ds and a light greenish blue for dd.

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Let's see

 

 

The entry hall and upstairs loft area is kind of khaki

The living area and kitchen are off white

The dining area trimwork is painted with the same off white but it has some seriously ugly sagegreen wallpaper above beadboard wainscoting - I can't wait to get around to that room

The upstairs game room is the same off white as downstairs

11 yo ds has red walls!

9 yo dd has pink walls

The master bedroom has aubergine (eggplant purple) walls - it's very dark and romantic

 

So, in general the colors are very neutral through all the main rooms, but the bedrooms are very individual.

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I'm a 30s color kind of gal. I like the four basic colors--clear, clean tones of green, blue, rose, and yellow. The entry has a border paper with all 4 colors in it, as does the kitchen, so I kind of carry the colors through that way. We just redid the living room--hated giving up the country blue, but I am very pleased with the sage green carpet and 'balsam fir'/celery-toned green walls. The drapes have the four colors, and accessories of the four colors are there, too.

 

Hall and kitchen are blue with the attached 'dining room' half in a warmer yellow (the border paper's runs through the kitchen and 'dining room' halves). Our bathroom is pink and white, bedroom will be aqua with grey, dd's room will be pink and brown, one ds has sagey green, and the other a bit deeper blue. Oh, and the large entry is a deep rose on top and deep green with lighter overtones on the bottom.

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More than I would have thought :D Most of this is getting repainted this year though.

 

Creamy taupe=Entry downstairs/staircase upstairs hall/some living room/family room

Sage green=most of living room

pinkish taupe (light and dark walls)=dining kitchen

Mocha/white=guest bath

White=upstairs bath/master bath

Blue & green=dss room

Purple & green=dds room

Mocha & Chocolate=master bedroom

Silver sage=library/laundry/dd3s room.

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We're all about shades of grey, green, blue ("the colors of the sea" cf Sarah, Plain & Tall :))

 

 

(except the basement which we haven't got to yet & it's orange & wood panelling & even some weird wood shingling thing - inside! - which was very west coast trendy in the late 60's :lol:)

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We've completely avoided this in the last several homes. Military housing comes in white or cream and never seemed worth the trouble to get the required approval to paint when I was going to cover most of the walls with bookshelves anyway.

 

Seriously, between the bookshelves and the framed stuff on the wall, I doubt that anyone even notices wall color here.

 

 

I always thought that it would make an awesome home decorating series to have designers come in and do over military housing, while constrained by the rules (no structural alterations, limited painting ability, too many people in little quarters :D).

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Our family room, foyer and one wall of the kitchen that comes from the family room are an olive green color.....I think it is called "Shortgrass Prairie." Oldest DS has a deep red, middle ds has a forest green and youngest ds has a blue color called Electric Blue. The rest of the house hasn't been painted yet and it is still the antique white/cream color the house came with. We will be painting kitchen, gameroom and stairwell a light mocha color. The classroom will be a pale yellow called "Rain Lily." I haven't decided on colors for the 3 bathrooms or the half bath, or my master bedroom. I think in the half bath I am going to go with some sort of soothing yellow and then do red and black decor, but I am the worst at deciding colors.

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Wood paneled living room and dining room :glare: (will become some shade of cream or tan)

 

Sage green kitchen with yellow and orange accents and bright orange laundry room, pantry, and cleaning closet (they have doors, so no one sees them but our family)

 

Dark cream entry hall, upstairs hall, and stairs (looks like pancake batter :D)

 

Light blue school room and dd's room

 

Dark tan office and ds's room

 

Dark red master bedroom

 

Pink bathrooms :glare: (not my choice, will become one sage green and one yet to be determined)

 

We are keeping all of the downstairs rooms pretty tame, so that they all go together, but I'm not concerned with whether the upstairs family area (bedrooms, office) matches well, as you don't often walk from room to room.

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We've completely avoided this in the last several homes. Military housing comes in white or cream and never seemed worth the trouble to get the required approval to paint when I was going to cover most of the walls with bookshelves anyway.

 

Seriously, between the bookshelves and the framed stuff on the wall, I doubt that anyone even notices wall color here.

 

 

I always thought that it would make an awesome home decorating series to have designers come in and do over military housing, while constrained by the rules (no structural alterations, limited painting ability, too many people in little quarters :D).

 

I know what you mean. I was born and raised military and then married into the military. I spent the first 3/4 of my life in military housing and then with my hubby's career we moved for another ten years after that. This is the first time we owned a house long enough to get around to where we can paint the walls so it's all new to me. Maybe while that is why I am so constrained in my color choices - baby steps. :tongue_smilie:

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We moved in 6 months ago and haven't repainted. We wanted to have time to consider new colors and see the amount of light each room got before repainting.

 

We have a very open floor plan, so the sunroom, dining room and living room are a sage green with a darker, complimentery green below the chair rails. The kitchen is an off white. Our bedroom, the master bath and downstairs hall bath are yellow with yellow trim (there must have been a sale, lol). One upstairs bedroom is yellow and the other is wallpapered in an off-white with thin chocolate and rose stripes. The upstairs bath is peach.

 

We'll be repainting the bathrooms this spring - a big job since we'll need to paint the walls, the trim (the previous owner painted the trim to match the walls), the vanity and the permanent wood shelves. I like the green in the downstairs, but the upstairs bedrooms will be redone, too.

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Hmm, how many colors of paint...

 

Nine or ten.

 

We have quite a few fairly bright colors, though we usually only do one wall in a bright color and have the others off-white. All the colors in our public spaces are warm, except for the recently-renovated bathroom which is blue -- we were going for a water theme there.

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