Start with your furniture. Then you pick color that enhances and enriches the entire plan. Picking paint before you have furniture limits your furniture choices. It’s like putting on your shoes before you put on your socks. You need a plan for the room, including the furniture, lighting, rugs, draperies, accessories. You need to consider the natural light, morning, afternoon, and evening. Then paint. Paint can be mixed in any shade, but upholstery and rugs are much more limited in choice.

What a lovely house!
Have you thought about replacing the carpet with hardwood floors? I think that would make a huge difference in how the space feels.

Benjamin Moore Ballet White In a couple of finishes or White Dove on trim. I like BM’s Natura Line.

Really nice space! Is that your furniture or the previous owners?

The one things that strikes me is that the scale of the wainscoting seems a bit low in comparison to the height of the ceilings. If it were my space, I would look into building up the wainscoting to follow the line above the fireplace mantle. Imagine if the wainscoting went up higher and was white (consistent with the trim and cabinets I see in the kitchen) and then a light neutral on the walls and ceiling above: something like BM Pale Oak.

I do think wood floors would really enhance the space and bring in some warmth. The carpet looks nice though so perhaps it wouldn't be worth changing.

Hope you'll share as you work on this room. It has a lot of beautiful features and great potential!

Paint is the last step in a decorating project after all the fabrics and textiles have been chosen. They are set in stone while paint can be custom blended to work with them. I suggest you start browsing vaulted living rooms and put together an ideabook of those that interest you. I do think you should consider adding some architectural element up there to give more visual importance to the room. I like the idea of raising the height of the wainscot too.

https://www.houzz.com/photos/living-room/query/vaulted/nqrw/p/18

IMO the two furniture pieces in the corners are not working for your room. I am not a fan of the TV over the fireplace but that is an option for your room

Placing the TV on a corner mounting bracket is another option. It will allow the TV to be angled to your desired direction.

Start with the staircase which is an important focal point. Get rid of the builder's stock railings..

Paint color is usually last. If your furniture is neutral do you have an art piece or something you want in the room? Fabric for curtains can be equally hard to think through if you don’t have something to anchor you but that can also be a starting point. Hardwood floors would be spectacular and if you went that way your area rug choice might be the anchor. If you just want to go fairly monochromatic that’s ok too and then you can add pops of color later. Maybe Post a picture of another room you particularly like in your house (current or previous) and or some art or furniture or curtain choices you have made?

Really nice house. Staircase looks good -- definitely would not paint it.

Replacing the carpet with hardwood floors or tile floors could eliminate the grayongrayongray vibe before doing anything else. Since the paint appears to be in good condition, would leave it alone until your choice of new flooring is installed.

If you're keeping the carpet -- or after your new flooring is installed -- you might consider painting only the wall above the wainscoting (or painting only the wainscoting and, perhaps, the window trim to match that if you don't like the light wainscoting.)

Love those windows! The arches don't need a drape. Professional spray the windows for uv. And move furniture from windows to a wall & corner.

What a big lovely room!

The start to any room is to determine what you want to do in it. Entertaining? TV watching? Reading? Dining? etc. Once you determine that, then you need a plan. Plan out the furniture arrangement, either on graph paper or on a computer, keeping in mind what you want to do, what furniture you need and the size of the pieces, the spacing between the pieces. Then you decide on a style and figure out what colors, patterns, fabrics/textiles and other materials you need to achieve your style. Then you need a lighting scheme, to make sure that the room is illuminated properly. Window treatments, and other accessories are next. It's a process, and you don't start with the wall color, which comes last.

This is what a decorator or designer would do, and if you have no idea or clue of how to do it, you might want to hire someone. You can find a decorator who will do a one-hour consultation or help you with the whole project from start to finish.

Crowd-sourcing on the internet works for small decisions, like whether to choose one chair over another. Crowd-sourcing the entire room is not efficient, and you'll be going back and forth in circles with all the conflicting advice. Believe me, I've seen this on Houzz for years--discussions go on endlessly with no visible results.

In answer to your specific questions:

1/2/3: See first picture below under window treatment for the look - paint everything the same creamy white for an uninterrupted, updated look. If you are heading towards a more modern look, consider removing wainscotting.

White Dove question - be sure to compare the whites to get the right shade with your carpet (if keeping) and your furniture. I personally like first and last colors below. Ask BM’s consultant for the appropriate finishes for walls and trim.

Fireplace: Wait until you have painted room and decorated. Depending on your style and budget, you could whitewash stone or change to say marble.

Window Treatment: Roman blinds would be lovely and duplicate on sliding door. Adding bench seats would be a bonus.

If you need privacy, you could just add drapes on far side of windows. Be sure they are double width so when closed they are nice and full.

You could add shutters with or without drapes

Staircase/Wainscotting: Carpet - not sure if you are removing carpet everywhere. If not, I would remove on stairs and restain (could add a runner if you like). Adding moulding to the large wall would be stunning (If you decide to remove wainscotting)

Enjoy your new home and take your time, so you make the right decisions and referencing Pinterest and Houzz for inspiration will also help in developing a plan.

Paint selection can be made once a clear direction is established for the room.

You are making your paint decision more complicated than it needs to be. You have 10 things on your list, but there are really only:

1) Ceilings. Downstairs ceiling, upstairs ceiling--pick one color.

2) Wall. The stairway wall is one of the walls of the room. It doesn't need special treatment (though you may need to think about what happens at the top of the stairs if there's a transition)

3) Trim. Plan on your wainscoting, window trim and fireplace all being the same color. If you decide to paint the stair rail or spindles, they get the same trim color.

Your bigger decisions are WHETHER to paint the bricks and WHETHER to paint the stair rail. If you just start with a default NO, you've reduced the number of decision and your stress level by 20%. You can always do them later if you change your mind.

See, I just turned your 10 decisions into only 3.

(Edited for formatting)

Thank you everyone! I was really wanting to know about the paint color.... but welcomed and appreciate all advice! I have been fortunate enough to always love the paint that came with my other homes in the past. The furniture in the picture is not mine.... I do like to stay in neutral pieces so I can change my treatments and accents out by seasons and all so I already know what I am doing as far as that goes. I am going to eventually change the carpet to hardwood, for now probably a natural rug. I am going to put the TV over the fireplace but I WONT BE HAPPY ABOUT IT! LOL ….And adding a large scale light fixture. I also will be adding beams. I do like the pale oak and the ballet and dove white. I have been seeing the trim a few shades darker lately and it goes against what I thought was "the right way" but I am wanting to modernize a little. I also have seen the wood trim and thought it looked to old school until the pictures from FREEDOMPLACE, one of those is right on point with the simple but classy but comfy look I'm trying to figure out here! All of the pics of that look have looked very outdated looking to me. The people selling the home wanted a blank slate and a cheaper bill at the paint store, for making a sale, I get that, I just didn't know about all of the "layers". Thank you CAWAPS for understanding what I was asking as well! And BEVERLY for the pictures tho it rubbed in the definite fact a piece of art would look better than a tv, sigh...…..

Is that something only a pro can do? The picture editing?

And so I should even the windows out (hang the curtains from the same height, even though the doors are lower) but not the arch windows? Or the outer corners of those two windows?

I appreciate EVERY comment, thanks for taking the time!

You could put the TV on the left wall opposite the fireplace and the couch to the right But have to put it over the fireplace

Regarding the picture editing, no you don't have to be a pro. Photoshop does amazing things, but you can accomplish a lot with the picture editing tools in Word or PowerPoint. Familiarize yourself with text wrapping ("in front of text" lets you layer images), remove background, crop, bring forward/send backward, and rotate options. Hanging rectangular artwork on a straight-on view of a wall is actually really easy. "Getting rid" of things that are currently in the room that you want to remove/replace can be harder (Beverly did a really nice job hiding the armoire and curio cabinet and filling in the missing window bits), but it's a question of creatively using what you have to replace or mock up what's missing.

For rugs, some of the online vendors (RugsUSA, eSale rugs) have visualization tools that are really good at sorting out what's furniture and what's floor from a photo of your room and displaying the rug correctly.