Please help me - decorating whole house

[foreverondiet]

Hi - we are decorating our whole house! We have rebuilt a 1930s house but have extended it quite a lot.

So thoughts are:

• Most rooms - nutmeg white (a shade lighter than natural hessian)

The downstairs has oak coloured laminate flooring. Our bedroom & spare bedroom grey carpet. Hallway / stairs probably stripy. Our bedroom and living room will have one wall feature wallpaper, but downstairs anyway will be very neutral.

• Kids rooms - ultra white walls & feature wall (bright) - white laminate on floor. DD's dream boat (crown) wall, DS1 lost lake (dulux), DS2 kiwi crush (dulux)

• Playroom (north facing) - ultra white

• Paintwork (skirting / architraves) white eggshell

Sorry pressed post too soon! Any thoughts? Is this too boring or does it sound ok. I guess debating whether to do the nutmeg white or natural hessian?

I've decorated four houses now since my first DC ten years ago.

One thing I would whole heartedly recomend for heavy use areas like halls and playrooms is wipeable paint. I can clean my current house hall and stairs with a damp cloth in minutes and the white is white again.

The wall outside our family bathroom also gets stroked as they go into the bathroom, so is always getting hand prints - again wipeable so i can clean it.

The childrens beds are all against walls too and those walls deffinately benefit from being regularly wiped. DS2 has had a cold and without going into too many details my otherwise angelic little boy can also be truely disgusting.

I like just the interesting side of neutral.

Thanks, yes using endurance (wipeable) paint everywhere.

Thoughts on the colour? Here is a link

link

I like the sound of most of it.

Don't like the kiwi crush colour though, too yellow. I think bluer greens look nicer and cleaner.

You know what your DS will like best though.

Are you sure white floors are a good idea for DC rooms? We had white painted floorboards in our old house. Looked lovely but was a nightmare to keep clean. Showed the dust even after hoovering.

I would not like the joins between the proposed stripy carpet and the grey. I like carpets to flow through all the rooms, ie from landing into bedrooms. It gives a more streamlined look. Not sure I would use white for the playroom. My north facing rooms are Pointing by F and B and this works well and is less stark. Similar to your Off White choice elsewhere. Again it would look more streamlined.

We have white painted floorboards and large area rugs in the children's rooms and it's worked very well for us. We do hoover up dust bunnies the size of kittens though, regularly. I think white laminate sounds lovely - which one is it? I rather like the one Ikea do, and going by their showrooms, it does hold up well to heavy use!

I'm not a fan of stripy carpet, could you carry the grey through? We are having grey carpets (TOMORROW) in our new loft bedroom and bedroom in the extension but retaining white painted floorboards everywhere else. I am super excited by the thought of carpet :) I have bought massively thick underlay to go under them, as we were worried about the awful noise from the loft bedroom. We have cats though, who are monsters and scratch the hell out of carpeted stairs, so we've had painted stairs since not long after the first cat arrived. You get used to the slight slippiness, and it's oddly satisfying to wash the stairs down once a week.

How do you feel about wallpaper? We used one wall of Carnival by Graham and Brown for DS's room, and DD has a lovely retro paper in two colours (one for the chimney breast, one for the alcoves) in her roomm, which looks lovely. I know some people hate wallpaper though!

Kids insisting on laminate - it's a quick step white wood look but actually a bit grey ie not totally white.

Am going to consider other greens...

I think I am going to stick with white in playroom - one whole wall of ikea white cupboards another wall is mainly window, third wall is desk and bookcase so not much walls.

Re: carpet - unsure grey will look good with the oak laminate ie on the stairs (downstairs oak laminate). But maybe should just do it anyway?

Pixie green so much nicer.

Beware, wallpapering is surprisingly more expensive than painting.

Yes, will do a couple of feature walls of paper, but more expensive - and kids seem happy with coloured wall.

DH seems to like that green (kiwi crush) so now have to persuade him. I am looking at celtic moor 2 as its very similar to a colour in the curtains.

celtic moor

if you like to change this often - then if you have a couple of large wall plaques that are wallpapered ( 8x4mdf will do ) these are really easy to re wall paper and give a more 'art work on wall look ' instead of actually wall papering a feature wall ( uses less paper too ) - can work well in alcoves or in threes to break up large walls ... might be an idea ! we did this in a room where found the perfect fabric - but no matching wall paper ! so had a pair of fabric panels instead in the alcoves ! looked fab !!

... works with blackboard paint for kids rooms too !