What colour for a north-south living room?

[WhereIsBlueRabbit]

I need to decide what colour to paint our living room and have no idea where to start! It's a 30s semi with a living-dining room stretching from front to back. The front is south-facing with a bay window. The back is north-facing with French doors, so obviously different light levels. It's complicated by the fact that we plan to extend at the back, which will affect light levels further, so that's put me off using darker colours. But I really want to be bolder with colour!

Which colours look good in both warmer and cooler light, and won't make the darker end of the room feel pokey?

I think I would pick a color that looks good on the north facing side, as it will all look nice on the south facing side.

Don't you want to wait till you've extended? If that's more of a lot no term plan but you'd like to paint now, I'd go with a hue that's neither too warm or too cold. It'll probably e best to get a few samples and paint them onto A3 or A4 sheets to try them in both spaces at different times of the day. Other than that, I'm not sure there's a limit - blue, green, purple etc.

That was my original plan, to wait until we've extended, but that will be a year or two away and we're getting the place rewired next month so I'm trying to get my thoughts in order in case the damage is such that we don't feel we can live with it for two years! (Although we won't replace the flooring until we've extended.) It also means we get to replace our ancient sofa .

At the moment I'm torn between a pinky grey colour (something like Farrow and Ball Peignoir) and then a grey sofa, or going wild with a purple sofa and some kind of yellow-green colour for the walls, which I think could look either fab or vile depending on the shade .

Oh, you'll definitely need to redo your walls after electrics. I'd just make sure the electrician chases cables out to where the extension is going to go so that he doesn't rip up your lovely walls in 2 years' time!

Sounds like pretty funky choices of colour. DH loves that sort of vivid yellowy green and it's one of the colours that we've had on our walls (as well as many other brights). One thing I would say, though, it's to be open to repainting fairly soon if you've had enough of it. I tend to go off them after a year or 2. So I'd also be careful with the colour of big furniture purchases (like a sofa) in case you want to change the colour scheme.

Yeah, we moved in last year and although the decor ranges from liveable to actually really nice, I've been itching to paint and had to hold off until the rewire is done.

Basically, I want to be bolder and get away from sticking to magnolia-type shades but I'm concerned about the north end of the room looking too cold and dark if I go for a more neutral grey or blue shade. I also want to avoid the dark walls that seem to be fashionable at the moment. Any other thoughts on warm but not dark colours?

The purple sofa is not something DP would agree to, I suspect! But if we went for grey, then we could always redecorate if we got rid of the pink. I just think one of those purple velvet sofas from Loaf would look amazing! But am clearly in need of being brought down to earth given my toddler's Petit Filou habit

You can get fabrics with a solar protective coating which work well for south facing windows and north facing windows. I am always chasing light in my house as we had big extension done and it made the existing rooms dark. Definitely check out vision roller blinds I got mine from a company called blinds superstore, they are great for privacy and controlling the light.