More pics - dining room, hallway

I'd pull a beige color from the fireplace; one of the medium colors looks like a medium taupe/mocha. It wouldn't be such a stark contrast from the dark furniture and the right shade would not clash with the oak molding.

If the molding does not have a varnish or polyurethane on it you could apply a darker stain to it in the living room side.

I'm no help with paint colors, but I was wondering how you like your soapstone counters. We're trying to decide on a material for our kitchen counters and I was originally leaning toward soapstone, but then heard that it scratches easily. What's your experience been?

Rosebud3, I do like the mocha or taupe tones in the brick but they seem to have a little grey tint that makes the oak trim look more orange. The oak in the windows has a richer, non glossy finish. It is the old style oak trim around them that seems to have the more orange or yellow tint and bit of glossy finish. I need to find just the right shade of taupe, but am horrible at choosing when there are a so many choices out there

Jennifer, we love our soapstone. They are somewhat easy to scratch, but I have been careful with mine to minimize that. I learned not to slide metal pans across the counter, but to instead pick them up to move. You can easily fix scratches with a little rubbing and mineral oil. I take hot pans right out of the oven or stove and set them down on the counter as it is very heat tolerant. Our soapstone is green/black after oil finish was put on. Have also seen the more grey/black with white veining which is beautiful.

Pick out a slew of color samples from the paint dept. Tape them to the wall next to the oak trim. Look at them at all times of day. It is amazing how a color can change its appearance throughout the day. I am actually struggling with the same thing, but my molding was just stained (no varnish or poly) so I can darken it a little so it doesn't look so orange.

I too have the oak trim and am reluctant to change it, for similar reasons to you, i guess. Indeed, finding a paint that will work is a challenge. I have been using the colours often used in arts and crafts homes as inspiration. I have been looking for a creamy yellow paint and -- there you have it! Why are you changing the yellow? i like it. Can you tell me the paint color?

Beautiful house. I can see how the oak trim can be overbearing but it is definitely leaning towards the Arts and Crafts look, which I think you are embracing. https://www.houzz.com/magazine/so-your-style-is-arts-and-crafts-stsetivw-vs~1622797 i think you should look to that for inspiration. i think you can go a little deeper and richer with the colors but you really need to work with samples to find the one. I do like the taupe color. The carpet is also really clashing because it is gray and making your trim look more orange. I also think trim should be the same color throughout the house to keep a unified look.

Thanks for the idea rosebud3. As to the yellow wall color, it has been there for 10 years so I guess I am just tired of it and feeling like a change. I chose it in the first place to warm up the room and it does compliment the oak. However, there seems to be discontinuity between the green of the kitchen and yellow of the great room.

I love the Arts and Crafts style, but am stuck with a transitional house so I try to incorporate it a little with my decor We are going to change the carpeting in the great room so I am in need of ideas for the floor color as well. My husband and 12 year old like having carpeting in the great room as we sit on the floor at times and it is warmer during our long Wisconsin winters. The carpeting also goes down the stairs to lower level. The color has always seemed to grey to me as well.

Would painting the brick around the fireplace do any good, say a creamy white? I would leave the stone insert alone. That way some of the grey tone of that wall would be eliminated and perhaps brighten the room. The wall color would pop a little more. We could also update the mantle to cherry (my favorite wood) or a darker stain of oak to enhance the Arts and Crafts look. The built in bookshelves in the great room are maple and match the maple cabinets in the kitchen. You can see the grey tone of the brick better in the closeup picture below. It looks darker in the picture taken from further away than in reality.

to make it flow better, I would consider continuing wood floors and getting a large rug.....you did a great job in your kitchen

I love the idea of wood floors and beautiful area rug, but it would be a hard to sell for my husband. He thinks all that wood with 10 foot ceilings causes the sound to echo too much. Maybe if I work on him a little more...

I love the Arts and Crafts house photos from Erin. I wonder how expensive it would be to change the trim to 4 or 5 inch oak (whole house). That would certainly upgrade our look.

Thanks for the info about soapstone. Good luck with your paint colors!

I have had the same dilema of seeming to find my perfect homes over the years but always seems to be paired with oak trim. I have had good success with macadamia by Sherwin Williams. Hope it helps!

Macadamia is a nice color. I don't have the Sherwin Williams color deck at home so will have to grab a sample from the store.

I like the color of the brick on your fireplace as it is.

Ok, I threw out the idea after seeing this suggestion on some of the other threads. If I get the right color of carpeting perhaps that will help pick up some warmer color in the room and not fight the brick.

We have a house with oak trim. Previous owners painted the master bedroom Powell buff (master bath Hepplewhite ivory). I like the color scheme just not for the master. It would be a lovely color for main floor living. Our main level is Monroe bisque. (BM). Great color with oak trim. It is in about family room which is a north facing room and it comes off as a warm beige during the day. We struggled finding the right beige to coordinate with oak trim and Monroe bisque just worked.

BM Litchfield Grey - we have oak and that is our paint colour - very neutral and works well.

We have the oak trim also and I actually like it and am thinking about paint colors for the living room, too. I keep looking at Whispering Wheat by Glidden (Home Depot). It is still warm and yellowish, but more of a tan than yellow. Whatever you do, stay away from anything too cool. We just moved in and the previous owners chose some cool colors in some rooms (like the living room) and it looks different types of terrible at different times in the day. Always go with the warmness of the wood.

Your kitchen colors are beautiful. Using that as your inspiration, I would paint most of the other walls a light warm cream color, similar to your back splash. Navaho white is a great color. You could pick up the green again maybe just in the entryway, an office, the dining room, or some other space for continuity. I think continuing the wood floors into your family room and then using a darker patterned rug to tie the browns, creams, and greens together would be beautiful (like your pillow on the sofa). I think the light carpet doesn't look right with the walls and darker trim. If you stick with carpet, go with a darker neutral. I would also paint the red trim in your dining room white.

At our small hardware store there is a woman there, fabulous at matching colors, She charges you to come to the house, but then the charge is applied to the paint. Maybe you have someone at a local store who could help you. I have oak trim also that seems to have a hit of grey in it. I find it very very hard to match and quite often have lots of paint patches on the walls! I can't wait to hear what you finally decide on.

Thank you all for the color suggestions. Powell Buff is one of the neutrals I have narrowed down to. Monroe bisque looks so similar to Powell Buff when I compare them in the BM color deck I have at home. jag513 - You must see some difference once it is on the wall since you have had both colors in your house. I need to paint some larger samples and put them up for comparison. I want to repaint my master bedroom too (currently yellow as well so you can see why I am tired of that color) so I am wondering whether you got rid of the Powell Buff in your master bedroom and if you did, what colors did you use.
Somehow I overlooked Litchfield Gray, but it is also lovely - do you think it is cool or warm? Do you have oak floors or carpet in the rooms with that color? I do agree that cool colors look terrible next to the oak trim, at least in my house.
Calidesign - I love Navaho white and have it on the walls of the back hallway leading to the bedrooms and office. It looks darker there than I thought it would, but there is very little natural light in the hallway and I put the same color on the ceiling (a mistake I realized later, but was too lazy to change at the time). A brighter ceiling color may help. We originally had stark white paint in the entire house, so I was reluctant to go with a white in the great room and hallways and have it return to feeling colorless. Do you have any other favorite warm cream colors that you like besides navaho white?
I have a lot of red and green accents (sofa pillows as you pointed out) as well as the browns in the leather furniture and cherry tables. I had thought red would be one of the accent colors to use in my rooms. I love my large rug in the Dining Room and it also has a lot of rich red. I put red trim in there because a decorator 10 years ago picked it out (her motto was that every house needed red somewhere and it was her favorite shade of red!!). Do you think the red tray ceiling trim is too much red in that room given the rug or that red clashes with the overall color pattern of the house? The other wall color in the dining room is called crisp khaki and doesn't really compliment the oak trim either. If I used a more colored warm neutral like Powell Buff in the adjoining areas I would need to change the crisp khaki walls to either match those rooms or pull in the BM saybrook sage from the kitchen. The arts and crafts look is strong in the dining room so green goes well with that theme. I like BM soft fern almost better than Saybrook sage, but am not sure if using 2 different shades of green is correct in the design world.
Sorry for such a long reply. I am currently on medical leave recovering a broken ankle - 6 weeks of no walking and 8 weeks of no driving. Very frustrating as I can't get to the paint store for samples. I have become a Houzz junkie though and appreciate everyone's advice. What a great source of information.

We are just completing a renovation of a 1960's ranch house keeping as much original woodwork as possible and it can be very orange if one is not careful. I have made paint choice mistakes and had to repaint for that very reason. Our main living area is not completely open but flows from one room to the other so for me, the color needed to be consistent. I chose BM bennington gray. It is such a neutral khaki that almost any colors will compliment (your reds and greens for example) and it is a good color for our fireplace stone which is also original. The color looks great with all the woodwork and red oak floors. I painted the ceilings BM linen white (my favorite creamy white) so there wasn't such a stark contrast. Your house is lovely. Get well soon!

BM Mascarpone is a nice warm creamy white. Am doing all the trim in my house with it.

Thanks - More great colors. I don't have mascarpone sample to see other than online, but looks like a nice warm white.

For a long time I was afraid to go with "color" on the walls. I thought that the oak trim, doors and cabinets needed to be complimented with off-whites. tans and yellows. I thought these neutral shades would also help to brighten the inside of the house. Then I tried a darker, sage green on a smaller wall surrounding the oak, kitchen cabinets. Beautiful! In another room I used a very dark, hunter green below an oak chair rail with antigue white above. Looks great. Rather than compimenting the oak, it seems contrasting it worked for me. I also found that a shade like peanut butter looks nice.
Also, I've found that the brick in our fireplace can be better matched to floors and walls by misting a new color of paint with an air brush. Just enough to add a hint of the new color(s) to the brick. Only takes 10 minutes.

Wow, I admire you for being talented and able to do air brush painting. Sounds intimidating to me, but a painter could likely handle the project. I used to have a strong color in my kitchen - terra cotta, but really find the current sage green more relaxing. I could find an area to pick up a darker shade of sage green like you did. There's not a lot of wall showing around the fireplace, but that is the focus of the room as you enter from the front door. Do you think a green accent wall there would be ok?

From your photo it seems that green might not work so well around the fireplace. The carpet and fireplace do well together. I noticed a few bricks in the fireplace with a dark brown/maroon color. If you matched the wall to those bricks the whole picture would come together nice and it should look nice with the oak trim as well. I'm not sure how this would work with other, nearby walls.

I have the same situation - trying to make the best of a house full of oak trim! I really like the results of Valspar (lowes) Peach Gala - 2003-2c. It's a very light, warm, cheerful peach that will definitely lighten up your north-facing room and will bring out some colors in your fireplace. And will complement your kitchen green. Something different.

I am not sure I like maroon alone, but there are some chocolate brown colors with some maroon tint like BM auberge 2106-20.

I agree - not maroon but brown with a maroon tint. That wall seems small enough that it wouldn't really darken the room and it would really make the fireplace pop out - in a good way.

It also has to coordinate with the carpet color too and we haven't narrowed that down yet. Our leather sofa and chair are more of a dark caramel brown to make it more complicated.

I see the carpet and the sofa and chair in your photos. The maroonish brown should work as well as any color. Your couch already looks nice with the (redish) maroon blankets. After painting, just repeat the maroon/brown around the room in picture frames, flower vases, pillows and/or blankets. This will help to justify the color on the wall. It would look nice. Good luck.

Your trim, furniture, and kitchen cabinets are of intense warm color. IMHO you should dilute it with cool tones. I suggest Offshore Mist by Behr , or similar light blue airy color.

Don't paint the brick! It is way too difficult to change color and/or sand off, and too many coats of paint on brick looks horrible. You could actually go a few shades darker green (more to avacado or forest green) in your great room...would warm it up and compliment both the brick and the oak trim.

OK, finally talked my husband and daughter into replacing carpet with matching wood floors and large area rug so she can sit on the floor. We took some carpet samples home and they just looked wrong up against the brick, sofa and adjoining wood floors. I started looking at area rugs and found the Pottery Barn Franklin persian rug, 10 x 14, which has the style I like and incorporates red and green. I want to pick up green in the room to tie in the green walls from the kitchen (BM saybrook sage - kind of bluish green). Have narrowed down the great room wall color to a warm beige (monroe bisque and powell buff look more yellow on my wall during the day, grant beige and BM Hush look more greige, less yellow - still deciding). Do you think this rug would work? Again, my style runs towards arts and crafts, but as I already have asian rugs in the other rooms so I would like to stick to this pattern.

Oops, trying to get a better photo. That one is obviously too small to see rug pattern.

That rug - beautiful! The green next to the fireplace may not be ideal - Personally, I would paint your fireplace in marscapone or another creamy white, and gel stain all the oak cherry tones with the larger trim detail you wanted, that solves your concern about yellow and then you can worry about reds! I think that your carpet is fine - love the neutrals you are looking at.

The rug is a great choice, with that in mind, I would lean towards the buff paint color.

Here is a better pic of pottery barn rug

bigger pic

Any updates you can share? Would love to see how it all came together in the end!

I also have lots of oak trim and oak cabinets and oak floors !!! A designer suggested reverse pewter by bm . Right now I have blonde by sw . I am redoing my home for my daughters wedding. Still not sure on going with the pewter color.

What is the name of the green pain wall color?