Decorating and Design - color choices

I am building a new house. My living room,kitchen and dining room are all together in an open floor plan...My kitchen will have knotty alder cabinets with a danish maple glaze with brown and is distressed.my counters have brown black,sand color in it,,,and is like marblized. my appliances are black..and i have a hammered copper sink with a brown patina...and will have a bar that is finished in the same color as the cabinets.
I was thinking about doing this painting my living room a khaki color with a wood at the bottom with a chair rail that goes also down the hall. And painting my kitchen and dining room a rust color...and you will also be able to see my walk in pantry room(which has doorway of it's own) a sort of dusty plum color and it will have log siding on the bottom

do i need to just stay unified or break up the two areas or is good to do it like that at all.
it is that if you sit on the couch and look over you will see the pantry color first then the kitchen and then you would see the living room.... so looking in that order with the colors I picked...would that make it look like a circus or look put together.

It is best that all interior trim, including chair rail, and doors be finished or painted the same color for sake of continuity. Wall colors can vary from room to room.

I doubt that you plan on painting all your interior trim and doors plum, so I'd skip the plum door. And, make sure hinges will be able to support the extra weight of the siding on the door and that the rustic look of siding is complementary to the style of your decor.

Rusty red and khaki are very complementary. You can bring the rusty red into the living room and dining room in accessories and accents. You can bring the khaki into the kitchen as well. The key to moving through the home with color is to find a way to repeat it for continuity. In open floor plans color has to visually flow.

The general rule of thumb is that the long wall that is shared by the areas be painted one color to unify the areas. Then, you can paint the independent walls a different color to define the distinctive areas. For instance, the khaki can be used as the color on the long wall to unify the areas, then paint the rest of the walls in the kitchen rusty red. The remaining walls in the living room can be painted khaki, as well. Or, if you feel khaki on all livingroom walls will make the room too dark, then you can paint the other walls a creamy color.

Ceilings are no longer stark white. You might want to consider cream for your ceiling.

Go to www.hgtv.com (http://www.hgtv.com) and click Dream Home and click Tour for a virtual tour of this year's Dream Home. While not exactly an open floor plan, the rooms are open to each other. Rooms are painted different colors, but they all are very complementary in colors. They are unified with white trim through out. You can click through the various rooms and see a 360 degree perspective of each.

Here at Designer Portfolio : DP KITCHENS : Home & Garden Television (http://www.hgtv.com/designers-portfolio/room/transitional/kitchens/2298/index.html) you will see a transitional kitchen. Note the darker khaki color wall coming into the kitchen. Then, at the corner the sagey green is introduced to complement the creamy cabinets.

Hi tammcm123 and welcome to the Forums!

Reading your color description I feel it a little heavy and with many dark shades (like the plum + brown black counters + black appliances)
I'd suggest tha addition of more color / focal points--> perhaps you should think more on side of the sand than on the khaki

I thank you for confirming what I thought i might do...
The plum I think maybe I didnt explain well enough...
off my kitchen is a huge pantry...(every woman's dream for a pantry).. when you sit at the bar or just get up in the living room you can see this... the siding I am using will go on the wall in the pantry (the wall that you can see.. it will come up about 36 inches and paint the top half a dusty plum.... I will use cafe doors in the doorway.... so you will be able to see the top of the wall which would be plum and the bottom which will the left over log siding I used on the outside of my house....(it is has log siding and stone on the outside)...
I thought the plum color... which I think has a hue of red in it and would play off the rust color in the kitchen and dining room then led to the khaki in the living room.

but i am like you about all the rest you explain about unity of the chair rails and the long hall of the living room doing it all the same color...

this is my first house ....and i guess I just needed to hear someone else think my idea was a good one...
so thanks so much for the reply... it helps alot..

Keep in mind that paint looks differently on walls than it does on paint chips in the store. Paint also looks differently under natural and artificial light. It's best to purchase some samples and bring home and paint on white posterboard or splotches on the walls and observe throughout the day and evening under both natural and artificial light to see how the paint looks.

If you feel the khaki is too dark, pick the next shade or two lighter on the paint chip strip. I once read an article that said if you found a paint color you like, go with the shade lighter and you will be glad you did. Even so, that's a hit and miss, too. It's best to actually observe a sample of the paint in the home. Paint a sample of the khaki, rusty red, and the plum side by side to see how well they work together, too.

Current paint colors are yellow-based. Thus, the exciting decorator colors today contain rusty reds, sagey greens, dusty golds and teals, and lots of creamy and caramely colors. So, pay attention to the undertones in the paint. That's where the compatibility occurs. All the colors listed above work well together, so choosing a color scheme today is so much more fun and more easy than say, in the 60s when paints were blue-based, and resulted in all the pink and blue and mauve and blue color schemes that are now really very dated. And, when the color gods get around to it again, they will change out the popular colors again, and we will move into another era of what's dated and not in decor.

thanks for all the tips... I will be doing the posterboard idea...again thanks

There are some great websites that can help you pick colors:
Application Moved Permanently! (http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html) and
ColorBlender.com | Your free online color matching toolbox (http://www.colorblender.com)