Small living room - dark feature wall. What colours to lighten things up?

[Threedaysaweek2019]

Please can anybody help with ideas to lighten things up?

Currently, the feature wall in the living room is ( I think) red currant glory, and the rest of the walls each side and in the rest of the room are in natural hessian.

The thing is, it’s a dark room. The sun only comes round to the front of the house around 4pm ish in the afternoon.

The idea (s) we have are.

1: to paint the whole of the feature wall and the two walls each side with natural hessian, but the rest of the walls in Timeless.
2: to paint the feature wall in Overtly Olive and the rest of the walls in Timeless.
3: to paint the whole bloody lot in Timeless, bearing in mind it might make the sandstone fire surround look dirty.
4: to paint the whole bloody lot in natural hessian.
Any ideas? What would you do?

Not sure if it came out right...

And thats natural light on the right wall, not a lamp.

I vote for #4. Small rooms are better with no feature walls.

To make the room lighter/brighter put a large mirror over the fireplace instead of the dark clock you have. You could have the mirror frame a dusky gold or bronze- whatever picks out the color in your sandstone mantel & surround.

Another trick is for your window curtain rod. Can’t see you window so not sure if you are already doing this. You get one that’s longer than you need so that when you open the curtains they are drawn all the way off the window and hang in front of the wall on either side of the window. Most people set up curtains so when they are open, they are still covering the left quarter and right quarter of the window so only the Center half is uncovered. You lose 50% of your light. Set up the curtain rod wider, so the curtains reveals 100% of the window, and you double your light.

@DoctorAllcome, thank you. The same colour all round is getting more appealing as time goes on.

Funnily enough, the curtain rod is quite wide and the curtains sit quite away from the windows when pushed back, so we’ve got that bit right so far, even with the tie backs. I might even sack the tie backs and let them hang straight.

Check gumtree...might bag one pretty cheap! No reason to spend a fortune.

www.gumtree.com/all/uk/mantle+mirrors

I vote try a mirror first and move the clock. Then a little bit of colour is nice. We have a dark duck egg there. What are your furnishings like? If all one colour might be a bit bland?

Quite like overtly olive now I've googled it but it's quite a different look from what you have now, what mood do you want?

As someone with an entire house pained in Timeless my vote is 3.
Then get a huge mirror or 2 to throw the light about, plus some brighter bulbs for the room.

Move to clock to the kitchen and put a big old map above the fireplace,something like an os map of the malvern hills .
A few seashells on the mantlepiece so you can claim to have been to thailand .

@DoctorAllcome, nice mirrors on there, food for thought.

@boringisasboringdoes, I get what you’re saying, it might look bland, but I’ll find accessories to break it up, I’m sure.

I thought of Overtly Olive as it’s a muted green and seems to go well with NH or Timeless, and looked classy I thought.

@Countrylifeornot I have Timeless in the kitchen and conservatory and I love it, But I also.love NH, and Timeless might make the fireplace look too dirty. I can try a little patch test of both on the wall and see.

Brighter bulbs are on the list, plus new lamps are needed anyway. And a new clock on another wall.
@bobbikato, I like the idea of the seashells.

Basically I want the room to look warm, but lighter.

Many things to think about....

Move clock and put a big overmantle mirror up to reflect light.

Yes definitely will be a mirror there @Geppili

Jasmine White by Dulux goes better with greyed cream (of your fireplace) than Timeless. Because it is a different kind of white whereas Timeless is a brown variation so it clashes.
I love Timeless but it didn't work with our cream kitchen cupboards, because it was too similar. Jasmine white did.

Oyster by Fired Earth is quite a fascinating greeny white, looks basically white but has green tints in it. Makes a dark room quite sunny looking - our cupboards in the playroom which gets no sun after 8am is painted in it. It also has a glow in the darker hours of the day, akin to Timeless but greener rather than brown.

What about a pinky apricot colour in the whole room? I'm sure someone will know what to suggest. There is a nice lot of pinky orangey creams (very pale, but look darker on) in the Dulux Heritage range - we have one in our bedroom, darker than magnolia I cannot remember the name though 18 years ago..has it got a Roman in it?

I've looked it up and it is Dulux Heritage Stone, which we paired with Linen White woodwork. We have aqua olive and rich crimson in the room decor.

Not easy, this paint choosing lark is it? 😆
Natural hessian is still a favourite all over, just winning over the Timeless, but another idea that’s come to me is duck egg blue, or similar. It’s not very dark, so across the whole three walls, and a light cream on the rest?

I have a headache.....😵

I forgot to mention that we are changing our furniture colour to light or natural oak, it’s currently Jacobean oak, so very dark.
Looking back, that was definitely the wrong choice, but hey ho.

I never thought of our fire surround as having a greyed cream look about it, but I’ll have a look at the Heritage stone paint and Jasmine white @Nettleskeins. Your colour scheme sounds lovely.

@lilibelinteriors, sounds like a good idea.

Thanks for all your input.

Now, where did I put the paracetamol......