To paint or not to paint

[Mumstheword1983]

Moved home. About to have this room decorated, new flooring to bring it up to date. Big question. Should we paint the woodwork white or leave it as the original wood skirting boards and door surrounds?

It's oak.Are you in Scotland? Scottish houses have a lot of wood features.

Yes. Bought said house for the sea view. It's by a harbour. Needs so much work.

How wonderful, a sea view would be my dream. I’m so envious OP 😀

Keep that gorgeous wood!
such good quality and very homely.
beats tacky white modern soulless style.
don’t be peer pressured into getting rid

Thanks very much. Here it is. Waited 44 years. Worth the orange wood.

Beautiful view. Definitely worth the hard work to get the house how you want it. 😀

i want to do this @mysoulmio but how does it work around the door frames if you want e.g. the hall a different colour from an adjoining room? Where does one colour end and the next begin, inside the door frame? I don’t know how to explain it 😂

I would leave it. I’d paint the walls and skim the ceiling so it wasn’t patterned, but that’s all.

What are you doing to the floor?

Keep that gorgeous wood!
such good quality and very homely.
beats tacky white modern soulless style.
don’t be peer pressured into getting rid
I agree with above ,plus it doesn't look orange to me .Plus - SO much easier to keep looking fresh.

Sorry just saw your flooring reply. I’m not into the grey trend so I think you should do the opposite of what I say 😂

I agree.

I haven't found water-based paint durable.

I’d paint them because it’s easier to clean a gloss or satin wood finish than wood.

Awaiting 8 samples. Mixture of light grey oak and various wood options. The ceiling is being skimmed this week. That's the first to go.

Not set on grey, have various colours coming.

We were a bit puzzled by this but went with everything that is visible with the door closed is done in the colour of that room or hall, the bits covered by the door we did the colour of the room the door opened into. So the door jamb, the bit which stops the door going the wrong way was painted the hall colour everything inside of that is room colour.

Hey, I'm on holiday or I wish I could show you a couple of rooms I've done recently as i puzzled long and hard over this 😆😁 and tried different options but yes, essentially, I found a dividing line between the hall (still white) and the room I was painting and used Dulux Quick dry satinwood in the same colour as whatever Dulux matt wall paint I was using. I stopped at the point, as PP said, where, when door was closed, you can see no white. I am no expert but I must say it really helped modernise a tired looking house that hadn't been decorated since built in early 2000s.

The dulux wood paint is dead easy to apply and goes a long way and so you only need a small pot (buy online, cheaper). I did it all by hand and by eye because I am an OCD obsessive 😁 but green gorilla tape helped as well and could be used to do it all. I suspect most decorators aren't fans as its not something you can just slap on.

I have left the doors white for now but am tempted to do them in the same colour as I really like the effect. I will try and post some pictures when I am home on Wednesday.

I love your views. I would be tempted to go simple with warm toned neutrals and make the windows frames to the view 😀

Are you local to that area, as in are you familiar with the light changes year round? Light changes seem to be more pronounced by the coast or large bodies of water (or maybe its just my imagination!). I would take my time choosing the flooring and keep the samples down in different rooms to see how they change during the day.

It looks like oak. It's a massive job to sand and paint every room, I think I'd be inclined to choose a warm natural neutral paint (maybe dulux just walnut) and see how a change of wall colour looks with the wood before committing to repainting it all. I think it could look nice. I'd certainly keep the wood on the staircase

Yes I've always lived here. Thanks for this. I'm getting great advice here.

I'm going to spend some time looking into warm toned neutrals and colour drenching before I decide. Appreciate all the posts I didn't expect to get so many answers ❤️

Thanks to everyone that replied. In the end it was just too costly to revamp all the oak so we did indeed paint it white. Thought it was only fair to update. We kept the windows oak as they need replacing asap. Thanks again 😁

I was “team Oak” but it does look good OP

It does look good.
What paint did you use?

Our decorator used an oil based eggshell on the woodwork.

@Mumstheword1983 it looks lovely, really changes the look of the room… can I ask what colour you used on the walls? I’m hunting for the perfect natural colour for my bedroom and yours looks great