Help with choosing wall paint pls!

[Yufnkc]

Hi everyone

Would really appreciate some ideas on a suitable colour for our walls in our through living room/dining area. We recently bought the house and while we love that the flooring is engineered wood it really is a hideous yellowish colour.

My husband loves the dark blue we've got at the moment (will attach a pic) it's dulux sapphire salute,but I'm not keen on it, it feels very cold and clashes with the floor. Ideally I'd love to change the flooring but that's far too expensive for us right now so I'm hoping change the wall colour to make it more warm and cosy and possibly compliment the flooring?

We would like to stay away form bold colours now! Any ideas would be very much appreciated

All that white woodwork against the dark blue walls would give me a headache!

If the floor is engineered you should be able to sand and stain it - we did this with pine floorboards which had got very yellow, used Finney's white wood dye (diluted) to lighten them and get rid of the yellow, and they are still holding up 4 years later. There are quite a lot of options for staining darker etc. if you prefer.

What way does the room face? The kind of light you get in a south-facing room will be really different from an east-facing one for instance.

If you want to keep it blue I'd go for something softer, perhaps with a bit more green in it? But a mid-tone (something like Farrow & Ball Oval Room Blue) would look lovely. But again that will look really different according to the light you get.

Whatever you do I'd strongly advise either painting all your woodwork (all of it - window frames, doors, skirting, shelves, cupboards) the same colour as your walls, or a toning shade slightly lighter or darker but not white. Also paint above your picture rail the same colour as the ceiling (again not necessarily white - try a paler shade of your wall colour or a toning one). That will make your ceiling seem higher.

Thanks for your ideas, yes you're exactly right about the white there's far too much of it. Its north facing so gets some light but not flooded, it's generally a dark room which is why I think the blue doesn't work at all.

Thanks for the tips on the floor will look into into darker varnishes

In a north facing room I'd steer clear of blue altogether really - go for something with a warm base (pinks, warm beiges, yellows, even red/brown tones all worth considering according to your taste). Or a yellow-based green would be lovely in a north facing room, would make the space feel cosier. Also of course you don't have to paint both halves of your room the same colour - assume the rear part near the French windows is south facing? You could go for a co-ordinating colour in there, or just a similar one with a cooler undertone.

You could even do your woodwork in each half of the room in the wall colour of the other to tie them together. Think about that arch and how it frames your view into the other end of the room. FWIW these double-aspect living rooms can be a bugger to decorate, I have one myself!

Have a look at the websites of the various paint companies, they are teeming with ideas for using different colours together because they all want you to buy more paint - Dulux/ Little Greene/ Farrow & Ball/ Mylands/ Earthborn all have great sites with tons of photos.

I'd try something like Dulux Natural Hessian. It's a warm neutral, looks beige in some lights but also a hint of pink in other lights. I think because it's warm but neutral it'll go nicely with your flooring and also with the white woodwork.

Thanks @Zinnia I think it's easier if I just treat the room as one big room and have it all in the same colour.

@carolinaWeeper we have dulux soft truffle in our hallway and I love it it was the one colour I had the most reservations about as reviews said it can look a bit purplish but it's a lovely beige colour, slightly darker than the natural hessian you suggested. I almost want to just do the living room in that colour as well as we have some if left over

I’d do a light green, one of the F&B shades.

Something like Dulux Antique Map might work? Warm enough not to clash with the floor but still within the neutrals enough not to get the slightly blinding white stripe effect!

I’d go for some kind of light green too.

Re. the floor, it looks fine to me on the photo, but if you find it’s too yellow it’s worth remembering that if you put two colours from opposite ends of the colour wheel together (such as blue and yellow) they will both appear much stronger.

What I’m trying to say is, that more than likely, your blue walls make your floor look far more yellow than it would look if you painted your walls in a different colour. If you choose a wall colour with some yellow in it (such as cream, or certain shades of green) the yellow in your wall colour will to some extent tone down the yellow in your floor.

I'd go for a soft sage green, rather than pistachio or apple shades. If the floor is sandable, that would definitely tone it down a bit. What sort of furniture is going in the space?

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