Thats kinda funny. I like some things on an angle. I have my couch on an angle now cause we have one large room for living and dining and I kinda like them seperated. Also have a dresser kitty korner in our room...neither boy does in their rooms though.
Karen L
And I like a mix of light and dark colors for walls....I have gotten away from plain beige everywhere.

That could be the problem--I don't have any room I would consider "large" so I like to keep the walkways free of obstacles (I can see me getting bruises from walking into furniture LOL).

Can you post pictures of light/dark wall colors? Every single room in this house is painted a variation of off-white!

Julie

I don't care for furniture at an angle. Maybe I've just never seen it done well. We have a large amount of square footage, but the rooms aren't large.

White, white, and off-white is popular here. It always looks to me like the people just didn't know what to do and left it. The biggest reason is most people think it brightens up a room during the winter. I always think they look rather stark and their artwork isn't always shown to it's best.

My mom had the pottery barn look in the early sixties, when everyone else was going with the brown, gold and green trinity. Her walls were painted a soft sage with a silvery base tone. Crisp white cafe' curtains and white wool carpeting. It was a very pretty house and those color walls were in the bedrooms and bathroom, too. She loved that house.

I like color in my house and in our former home the kids rooms were all kid colors (pink, blue and yellow) our playroom was yellow and we did the office in a burgandy and our living room was a deep eggplant. I wanted colors in this house, but it has those type of walls where there aren't good stopping and starting points. I ended up putting the colors on the ceilings. I have 8 foot in most rooms, 10 in the entry and several tall stairwells. Our living room is 11 x 14 and only has one window. I knew my eggplant wouldn't work well, so I mixed it half with a glaze and put it on the ceiling. I really like the effect.

One thing I've learned with colors (ranging from whites to everything else) is that you need either a warm or cool base depending upon what else is in the house. If your woodwork is a mahogany color, it will need a base with red tones. If it's a light oak or maple it may need a base with yellow tones. You can get any color in a warm or cool base, so it's not like you can't have blue if you have a warm base, you just have to match it to the right type.

My current house has cream walls in a warm base. If you put it next to a stark cold white it almost has a peach tint. Get it away from the cool base and it returns to cream. Using that as my guide I have the purple living room, a peach dining room ceiling, sage green kitchen, blue sewing room, gold hallways, a jadite green in the entry, a pink in a couple of niche areas, navy blue and grey in another area. All of the colors were tinted with a warm base and the eye doesn't read conflicting colors. When you walk into my front door you see four different ceilings and since they are all separate they are four different colors. They all look good together. Since I've carried the theme of the colors only on the ceiling in most of the house you don't get the feeling of "too much" even though there are 17 colors, total.

If you have painted woodwork you can take the cue from your wood furniture and then just repaint the woodwork. Warm or cool, red or yellow. I've found Benjamin Moore paint to have a really good color system. Each is marked W or C for the base and you can figure out what type of warm. They also have a paint finish called Pearl. It's pricy, but it's almost like pudding and goes on in one coat, I kid you not. I just painted my bedroom a deep, deep sage and we covered white in one coat. When I used Ralph Lauren on another project it took three coats to cover in a deep color.

Since we have pickeled oak cabinets in the kitchen and red oak laminate as well as terra cotta tiles in the halls, it was easy to work with the warm bases here. My cabinets have actually taken on a peachy hue since the painting has been done and I picked up on that with tan, peach and sage green 12" vinyl tiles in the kitchen.

Pick a room and get brave. Don't feel like you have to go with the trendy deep colors if you prefer light colors. I love pastels, so I always have some even though I'm still having my affair with the eggplant. Just match those bases to wood and fabric and I think you'll be happy with the results.

Gloria

Here's a link to the smaller homes forum where people have posted pics with lots of color.

Here is a link that might be useful: decorating in a smaller home

Gloria,

Thanks for the color ideas and the link! I didn't even know GW/THS had a smaller house decorating forum--probably because "decorating" isn't really a word in my vocabulary.

Interesting is that none of my neighbors have much color on their walls either. And ceilings are allowed to be a color other than WHITE? LOL

Oh--one more thing. My house is quite old. Is it true that darker paint colors will bring out the imperfections in the drywall?

Thanks again!
Julie

Our last house really moved in the earthquakes and had lots of patched cracks, which immediately re-cracked. I liked the pearl finish because it wipe off so well, but in your case, you might want to just go with an eggshell finish. There won't be a shine to catch the light and show stuff. I personally wouldn't worry about imperfections in the drywall. An old house is an old house. Once the pictures and curtains are up and the furniture in place, I don't think it will matter. I've lived in them so old that you couldn't paint, but had to put up colored wallpaper. I'm darn good at wallpapering with the old stuff. I hate this vinyl wallpaper.

I'm not really into decorating either. I tend to try and get the house to relect my personality and then I leave it alone. The longest I've been in a house is 10 years, so I haven't had to go back and update anything. And I hate to paint. It's so hard to get done, when I'm constantly interrupted. I paid $3,000 to get most of the walls and some of the higher ceilings done and now, two years later, I'm trying to get all finished.

Gloria

Confession: I am the angle queen LOL. Been doing it for years... actually before I ever saw it done elsewhere. It started when I got tired of having to maneuver through the bedroom, up and around the bed. Was amazed at the extra walking space it provided. It somewhat snowballed from there. Now, to me, bedrooms look so plain and boring when beds are typically placed.

It's fun!

lisa, what do you do about bedside tables? I tried to angle the bed once and didn't know what to do with the blank corner. With a king bed, it's a large triangle. Same with the sofa. Couldn't figure out how to have the end tables next to the sofa and didn't have room to pull it all out at an angle. In my house, it always meant half the windows were blocked. Like I said, I probably haven't seen it done well. I don't want to be climbing over the furniture to be opening and shutting windows.

Gloria

guiltgo, opening and shutting windows? I'm jealous! It's so darned hot in Houston most of the year, it's rare I EVER open my windows. Our fall, winter and spring seem to just blow right through quickly.

I don't have standard end tables/coffee tables. I was never a pair person. Helps being single too - I have an oriental looking stair stepped piece of furniture I use next to my angled bed. Don't have to worry about the other side. Works good and looks good in the bedroom. I could see a problem with a huge king size bed though. As always, it depends on the layout of your rooms. Perhaps I have always had rooms that angling will fit without causing blocking and/or making it more cumbersome to get around. In my situation, angling actually opened up areas to my benefit.

When I recently moved to a temp rental, I was faced with the oddest triangular shaped den and bedroom. To add insult to injury, in the den, one corner was consumed by a large brick cornered fireplace. Another wall was glass to the backyard, and half of the back wall was a half wall separating the kitchen with the remainder being open into a small formal area. WAS AWFUL!!! My poor movers (and my poor checkbook)... I kept having them move my den furniture around and around and around until I figured out it was probably costing me another hundred dollars LOL. I finally figured it out on my own later but my back sure paid for it!

I do have one bedroom where the bed absolutely cannot be angled and I can't stand it LOL. It's an antique set with attached nightstands. I did get to angle the armoire and the vanity though. Phew!

Do you remember way way back when most all furniture hugged the walls? And then, the trend was to pull the furniture away from the walls? I swear, that was the hardest transition I ever made. It looked so silly to me. However, once I finally broke out of being a "wall hugger", I went nutz. Just play with your furniture - give it a fair chance.

Uh-oh. Furniture isn't supposed to go against the walls? LOL I'm in trouble! No chance of angling anything in the bedroom. With a queen size bed we barely have a walkway around it now!

Gloria--is the eggshell finish the one that doesn't wash well?

Saw an awful HGTV show over the weekend called "Kitchen Crime Unit" or something. Really bad show--why did I watch it? There was a single mom with a beat-up kitchen (wouldn't have looked clean even if it was) and all the show hosts did was list all the bad germs in there and tell how she was putting herself and her child in danger. Everything they said was true, but I thought it was have been more "nice" if they just pointed out the germy areas, then told her politely how to remedy the problem without being so condescending. She did, at least, get the kitchen repaired by the end.

Julie, eggshell is a step above flat. It's washable, but you have to be gentle. I wouldn't use it for kitchens, bathrooms or high traffic areas with my kids around. I still haven't gotten to the point someone can walk down a hall or stairway and not drag their hands.

lisa, after experiencing cool summers, I couldn't go back to a hot climate again. While the winter is a bit long, summer more than makes up for it. So, is your stair thing half way to the foot of the bed? You're going to have to post a pic for us. We wouldn't do well without some type of bedside tables or next to the couch. I don't care if they are standard end tables or a flat seated chair. DH and I get up at different times and need a place for the alarm. I can image the griping I would get if people couldn't set down a cup of coffee while sitting on the couch.

I just finished taking the top half off the corner cabinet in our living room and putting the TV on it. I'm still not crazy about it, but darn, TV's are just so ugly and ours was sitting on a low table in front of the cabinet. 3,000 square feet of house and this is the only single corner in which it will fit. If the TV there doesn't work out, the thing is going on freecycle. I don't care how much the DH paid for it. It's his last piece of bachelor funiture and he's trying hard to hang on. Everything else finally made it out the door.

Talking about furniture against the walls. I think we really got stuck in that mode when sectionals became popular. Where else are you going to put that except against two walls or to divide up between a kitchen and family room. DH's sectional was the first thing gone and that took me a couple of years! I have his wing backed chair and my rocker angled on each side of an occasional table. Every time the man sits down, he shoves it right up against the wall next to the table. I call it the doctor's waiting room style of furniture placement. Everytime I walk by it, I just pull it back out. New meaning to the term "musical chairs."

I have so many small things I need to get finished around here and I get overwhelmed every time I make a list. Even when I divide it into rooms, it's too much. We moved in when the remodel was about 80% finished. I didn't want to do that, but the general contractor would still be here dinking around if I hadn't moved in on him. Why does it seem so hard just to get things like towel bars up when you don't know what you are doing? Getting tools, finding studs...and I'm reading to head back to bed. I tried hiring someone just to get some of it done, but at 75 an hour it takes him $300 to get anything done. It's raining and he's always wanting to go fishing. grrr.

I do not understand why people humiliate themselves on these TV shows. Just..don't..get..the..point.

Gloria