My wife and I are buying a foreclosure and having it remodeled. It is a modern house with a flat roof and lots of plate glass windows. It has potential, and we are really excited, but we are so nervous about taking risks with paint colors and making design mistakes.

Details: All the ceilings are low (8 feet I think), but the windows in the great room go from floor to ceiling. Also, their is an atrium in the middle of the house, but the glass roof is boarded up right now (it leaks). That will be getting fixed, so the great room will have floor to ceiling windows on both the exterior wall and the opposite interior wall where the atrium is. This means there is very little wall space but lots of natural light coming from both sides of the room.

We are switching the floors to an engineered wood floor that has a grey-ish undertone in color, which I have attached a picture of. We tend to like Restoration Hardware greys, so we had planned to paint the whole house in various shades of their grey colors. Our last house turned out well doing that, which I have also attached a picture of if you want to get a sense for some of our existing furnishings and tastes.

All that said, my wife is convinced we should paint the ceilings darker than everything else. She is trying to talk me into black even. But I am so afraid of doing that. I've seen pictures that look great, but I'm having a hard time picturing our space that way. Also, the floor plan is so open, that the ceiling is continuous from one public room to another with no break points between. So committing to a ceiling color in the great room means I'm committing to it in the kitchen, hallways, dinning, etc. Pretty much everywhere except bedrooms, baths, and laundry.

Question: What do you think? Would you do it? If not, what colors would you do with a modern house with low ceilings, lots of windows, and eclectic decor?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!