Bored of grey - what to do?

[Foolishlady]

Need to decorate all downstairs. Trying to work out colour scheme. All of the rooms flow into each other - front SE facing living room, middle room with no windows, then NW facing kitchen. So I can't go for different wall colours in different rooms because they'll clash with each other. So I was thinking neutral walls and add colour with furnishings, and maybe a feature wall in middle room. But what neutral?! I'm feeling a bit bored with grey and thinking in a few years it will date. My favourite colour is red, & definitely want accents in the kitchen & feature wall in middle room to be red. But would quite like to have green-y blue accents in front living room. What wall colour to pull this together? Grey? Griege? White? Magnolia?! Cream - but isn't that the as magnolia?!

Have you had a look at Eau de Nil type colours - you could easily stick to the same colour whatever you choose, but go for different shades, depending on warmth/where the light falls type requirements. The other option if you want to go for greeny-blue accents using furnishings could be some hint of duck-egg in a white or off-white on the walls?

Those colours would work with green blues, they would look lovely, but they wouldn't work with red. I'll probably just have to go for one main colour downstairs - but I don't want green-y Blues in a North facing kitchen, and red everywhere would be just too much!

You could risk a blue-based red or a coral type red as a feature wall for the living/mid-areas?
In the north facing kitchen, use a copper or gold accent to warm it up - could look really good (although this may not work if you do go for a red-accent in a room that is visible to the kitchen.

Actually a corally red might work in the kitchen too.

Magnolia always works a treat here...

Corally/orangey red might be the best solution, for the kitchen & family room anyway. I want to paint at least one wall of the family room a rich colour as I read this is the best thing to do with dark rooms - pale colours can look a bit dingy. Red/orangey red are the complementary colours to blue/blue- green so you would imagine there must be a way of making it work, but I would have to be careful with balancing my colours. I would plan to have accents of red in the blue/green room and some blue/green in the other rooms. The doors between the front room and middle room won't always be open but when they are, I don't think I could do even muted blue-green walls beside a rich red wall - it would be too much! Which is why I was thinking neutrals - starting to think magnolia (isn't it just another word for cream??) might be the best option. Or a greige - though as I said I'm worried about it dating! Ah decisions! It's hard to do colour but I definitely don't want a colourless house. Just difficult when the rooms all flow into each other!

Ooh - just remembered something - www.encycolorpedia.com - if you can't find the right combinations there, then I will eat all of the hats I own! (Which is quite a few ).

We had a kitchen painted in Soft Khaki paint (Dulux I think), which is a soft pale greeny blue, with red accessories. With the pale wood of the kitchen units it had a New England feel about it. Was East facing room but didn't get a great deal of light.