Decorating and Design - Choosing Colors!!!

Need some help with choosing a color for my living room.

We have an open floor plan with the kitchen, dinning room and living room all essetially one big flowing room.

The kitchen will be painted either a terra-cotta or a muted orange. The dinning room separates the kitchen from the living room and will be painted a light neutral color. I would like to paint the living room a strong color, but I am unsure what direction to go. My wife and I looked at the red wine colors, but that dark of a color scares both of us.

We want to stay on the warm side of the color wheel, but don't want something that conflicts with the color of the kitchen.

Please any help would be greatly appriciated.:wall:

Welcome to the DIY forums :)

Not the pro but here's a sticky thread if you hadn't had a chance to read yet that will get you started:

http://forum.doityourself.com/showthread.php?t=186106

Check back as Annette and others will do a great job helping you out.:)

hold on a second....i think there's more to think about here than simply what color goes with terra cotta & a neutral.

terra cotta is a strong color. i'm not sure i'd do yet another strong color in the LR, since you can see it all at once. you need one area to be the focal point, not 2. i'm also not sure the LR is the place FOR a strong color. if anything, i'd do the kitchen & dining room in the strong color and do the LR in the neutral and then use stronger colored furnishings in there.

let me ask you this: do you even have good starting & stopping points for these 3 different paint colors you're proposing? and stop & think about what you're doing - taking an "essentially one big FLOWING room" and you're wanting to stop the flow & chop it up into 3 distinct areas with 3 very contrasting colors, which is working against the architecture. now does it still sound like a good idea?

is the dining room a formal dining room, the only eating area (not so formal) or just the eating area/breakfast nook in/off the kitchen? if it's either of the last 2, i'd treat it the same as the kitchen and have those 2 areas be one big area and the LR it's own separate area.

also.....WHERE exactly do you NEED the strong color to work for you? like, are the kitchen cabinets white and therefore you need a good strong color to set them off? or do you already own a brand new beige sofa and therefore need a strong color to bring life to the LR?

i'd like some more detailed info to better help you. but i DO know that i wouldn't do 3 separate & different colors in this one large space, unless the third color is a version of one of the other colors, like dark brown (dark version of the beige) for example.

The three rooms are physically and visual separated by a 1foot bump out on the walls. The dinning room is not a formal one.

The kitchen cabinets are light oak.

The LR couch is a brown suede. We have rug in the LR that has multiple colors. The colors would be best described as darker italian colors ( wines, terra cotta, mustardy yellow, some dull green ).

thanks for the help.

oooh! i love all these colors! and i'm glad you've got the rug to pull them all together!! :thumbup:

i don't think i'd like using the wine color with another room close by in the terra cotta. nor do i think i'd like your brown sofa with wine walls, so i'd rule that choice out.

however, gold would be nice with the terra cotta & the brown sofa. gold is a neutral but has a little more life than just beige, so your terra cotta would be the punch of color. i'd use the terra cotta & gold in some combination. but only you'll be able to tell which to use where - see which is better with the cabinets. oak can be orangey or yellowy, so hold up each color next to the cabinets & see what works best. either one will probably be good with the sofa. i still think i'd do the dining room the same as the kitchen. or.....you could do the dining room with both the kitchen & the LR color - either use one above & one below a chair rail, or one wall in one color & the other 3 in the other color. use the DR as a transition room.

then if you have a nice little wall by the entry, you could do a little accent of the dull (olive?) green, and that'd be nice.

terra cotta, gold & olive are a variation on a basic primary color scheme of red, yellow & green. you can't go wrong with those colors, just be sure to always use them in the right proportions so they don't fight - 70% of the main color, accented with 20% of another one and 10% of the 3rd one.

what is the flooring in these rooms?

the kitchen has a laminet that looks like stone floor (standard look). the dinning room and LR have beige carpet. In the future we talked about putting tile or wood floors in the kitchen. That all depends on money and time.. :D

Never thought about using gold. Thanks for the help. Of course I will have to talk with my wife. ;)

thank for the nudge in the right direction.

yikes.....hold on.......since the LR and DR share the same flooring (carpet), i'd paint them the same and leave the kitchen different.

Even with the architechual seperation between the rooms? Could you painting both rooms the same, but one wall in the DR a different color? Paint one wall in the DR the olive color. Just a thought.

i think the olive that close to the terra cotta might be too much. then you're back to a choppy look.

you're saying: Kitchen terra cotta, DR 3 gold, 1 olive, LR all gold?

i don't like how the kitchen flows into the DR that way. they seem too different & unrelated. but maybe with accessories & draperies you can make it work. it's so hard to say without seeing it.

just remember....you want your furnishings, the "stuff", in the rooms to be the focus, not the paint on the walls. wall color should just be a backdrop for everything else. you really shouldn't even notice it.

maybe you could save the green to use as draperies in the DR or as accessories, instead of so bold as wall color.

We have a similar floor plan and I had to think long and hard about colors that would flow throughout the living, dining and kitchen areas of our home. Weeks passed with color samples taped to the walls so I could see how they would look in the daylight and at night before I made my final choices. I chose a nice gold for all the walls in the living room, the color looks rich and warm at night and it makes the room feel very cozy. I painted the dining area one shade lighter than the livingroom and then carried that same color into the kitchen on the wall that is shared with the dining area and on the whole ceiling. The other kitchen walls are painted an Irish/European green. Tomato red accents in the kitchen look great with the color combo. The trim throughout is a buttery-whitish color. The carpeting in the livingroom and dining room is muted shades of beige. I was extremely happy with the way the color scheme turned out and I can't even remember now how the walls looked when they were all light beige. Take your time and enjoy the color-choosing process even though it feels more like a chore. You'll be happier with the results.