Choosing house decor/colors?

How did you do it? Any good sites with ideas?

I am struggling mostly because I am going to be replacing a lot of the furniture over the next year to two. And I have no idea what colors those will be.

I've kind of gone with a tan/teal/chocolate and accent colors kind of thing with my past furniture.

The thing that is really tripping me up wis that my new house has near white carpet. It's brand new and nice so I'm not replacing it now, but I am not sure how to work around it or with it. Do you do darker walls? But all my furniture and the cabinets in the house are dark wood?

Right now everything is white in the house pretty much. They did white patterned wallpaper. Off white carpet. Off white walls. White furniture. I definitely need more color in the house.

ETA: The bed set I have now is going to eventually be the guess bed. It will be used though- teal and chocolate with some white and tan on pillows. The bathroom set won't work at all in the new place because it clashes with the tiles in the tub.

Eventually I want to update the bathrooms but that's down the line somewhere. So I need a happy medium between not clashing with what is in there right now and also being ok with the update down the road.

This is so difficult. lol I brought home about half the store's paint swatches.

My couch right now is GREEN but it is going ASAP. I hate it.

I like two light and a dark; light walls, light floor, dark furniture, or something like that. I like open, bright, airy spaces.

I like accent walls, bright curtains, and wall art to bring color in.

My only real advice is to pick solid colored furniture and use accents like throw pillows to add pattern/color. That way you can keep refreshing the look of a room without having to make expensive replacements.

With that being said... With white floors & walls, I would want darker furniture.

White walls and white flours are pretty awesome because you can basically combine anything. I'd go with dark furniture though, makes everything seem less sterile.
Our old apartment had white tiles and white walls and we accented with dark rich colors (lots of earth tones, reds etc.) to make the room seem warmer. We ended up painting the living room in a lightish brown tone. I now wish we had gone with more color... but alas the rooms were tiny, and it would have seemed even smaller.. In our new apartment we have dark red/brown on one of the walls in the living room and I LOVE it, it just gives off so much warmth.


I also LOVE this website:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/

Pinterest!!!

Easy. I signed up to it for this reason and it was a massive source of inspiration.

We ended up with a chocolate wall and teal furnishing. I love it

I basically went to Sherwin-Williams and such stores and thumbed through their color palettes until I found ones that seemed like they had all the colors I wanted in shades that worked well together and for the house.

Then brought them home and picked the palette that suited the house best while I was standing in it, assigned colors from it to different spaces, and then painted the house.

Worked for me anyway, haha

This - Go to the Home Depot or Sherwin Williams and look for the "packaged" brochures that have the color pallets that you like then buy a small can of each to try on the walls before you commit fully. They almost NEVER look the same on the wall in your space as you first imagine. Pick the curtains, throws and accent rugs last IMO.

-"Metro Man".

Ditto Pinterest. I went through and pinned stuff that I like without thinking too hard about it, and later I went back and actually looked at what I had pinned to be like "oh, well obviously I like this more than that because I pinned a TON of this."

I kind of just started with what I knew I wanted. I knew I wanted my office to be pink... and my bedroom has been blue and brown for years, and I intend to keep my bedding for a little while, and I like it, soooo I stuck with blue for the bedroom.
So I picked a bunch of different pink paint chips and a bunch of blue ones, just grabbing ones that appealed to me, and then went home and decided which ones I liked best.

Then after a lot of looking on Pinterest I decided to go with gray for the living room. I knew I wanted something neutral in there... gray appealed to me more than brown tones. Turned out I had pinned a LOT of gray living rooms, haha.
Then I thought I would do gray for the kitchen too, because my kitchen and living room look into each other and it's nice for the color to carry through. I decided to do a lighter gray in the kitchen though, sometimes brighter and happier and less formal looking. So I snagged a ton of gray paint chips too.

So I picked my pink and then picked my blue, then I found a gray that matched nicely with them (it has a slightly blue hue to it) and then a light gray that matched well with all of them. The living room has three of the darker gray walls, then the wall that opens up to the kitchen is the same lighter gray as the kitchen. The hallway is the light gray too, to brighten that up. The library also went a different gray because I wanted to keep the walls in there very neutral and relaxing.

As for the bathroom, towels aren't exactly cheap depending on the quality (and how many you buys) but accessories definitely can be! So I would just go to Target and buy some cheaper stuff for now that doesn't clash with the existing bathroom, and then you can worry about it later when you remodel. Now is a pretty good time to do it because they have all their cheap college stuff haha.

I have white walls and beige carpet. Since the house was bare unlike my last place, it was totally open for me to choose colors/ pick whatever I want.

I picked furniture first. I wanted affordable, comfortable, and something I liked the looks of. (And yes in that order LOL). I ended up with my FAVORITE red chair <3 and a beige/dark red patterned couch, so the color combo of black & red fit well. I got a lot of ideas off of Pinterest, got deep red curtains, a couple rugs and hung up black and white pictures in black frames. I like it a lot I also got a black couch cover to cover the couch when I want change

I'll link a pic, it's from Christmas time but you get the idea lol. I just remembered that the black chair is gone now and I have a new off white lounge chair lol

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/t31.0-8/706325_4537862797010_1962619161_o.jpg

I change my bathroom and bedroom a lot. The bathroom's really small and I always get those sets at Kmart or similar with the curtain, rugs, dish holder, etc lol. I do the same with my bedroom and bedding sets. I keep a light blue / brown theme in there though to match the curtains

Great ideas! I want to see pictures of all your ideas...

Did not even think of pinterest.... haven't been on in a while but good idea!

My carpet right now is beige so I'm really used to that. It just looks so different planning around near-white carpet.

One other thing I am working around is my dining set. It was given to me but totally clashes with the style of everything else I like. I am not sure what to do with it. Maybe if I re-upholster the seats it won't be so bad? Some sort of a solid color vs the pattern that is on it right now. I am very into the modern style and it is French country. But it was a gift and is super nice so I don't want to get rid of it...

For me, it kind of depends on the room but I often start with the main color I want. I like dark walls but our woodwork is all white and we have high ceilings. Then I find an accent (fabric for shades/curtains or throw pillows, or whatever) that matches and I can pull the rest of the colors and accent pieces from that.

Oh I should add...while I pick a general color scheme I want first, I pick paint to match the fabric or other center piece. There are way more paint shades available and I find it easier to match a piece than to match a piece/fabric to the paint later.

I'm not sure if you remember from being in our house, but we have the large painting that is kind of in the corner, but viewable from all rooms? We pull all our colors from that painting, which gives us a big variety.

We are currently working with an interior designer who is helping us with some of the details for the items we are replacing/re-doing. We are about to re-paint our house and she suggested that we stick with one color shade and if we want to change it up simply go up/down a few shades in the same color. I actually, really like this idea, because it allows us to switch decor up from room to room without the concern of it not matching. I personally am not a fan of accent walls, but would rather add pops of color in the decor.

For larger pieces we keep them a neutral color and add color. For example, we just got all new living room furniture (natural leather color) and I added bright colorful pillows that pull from the wall decor, etc. It's much easier to change pillows/throw blankets than paint walls.

As for the whole dark/light thing - mix it up. That is one of the new things that many are doing. For example, we will be going with mix metal finishes, and when we have our flooring laid we will be going with a light color wood even though all our furniture is dark and our wood work is white.

Another thing you can do is go to a place like West Elm or IO Metro and ask them to come out and give you ideas and draw up some plans for you. They normally do this service for free.

Here is our front room it was a big job lol.

The room is north facing so we knew we wanted it warm feeling. The white is a very subtle warm white, the chocolate is warm. The teal was a bit of a leap for me as I always stuck to safe reds and browns. But I love it.

We like old and new and I just pinterest colour schemes to death lol I liked a contrast, bright, eclectic.

I hate hate hate walking round decor shops trying to pick up ideas so seeing other rooms online helped me tons.

We were just ridiculously lucky buying furnishings I think and got them from about 2 shops that were opposite each other (now I do have to physically see those things before I buy, would have struggled getting them online).

The room:

http://www.chazhound.com/forums/showthread.php?t=273227

We like warm, dark colors. Most of our rooms have 1 or 2 dark accent walls and the other walls are cream colored. Our furniture is all dark colored wood.

Whenever we go on vacation, we pick up decorations. We have pottery from Nicaragua, wood carvings from Hawaii, paintings from Scotland, copper leaves from Tennessee, etc. It feels more like "home" having such meaningful items as our main focal points.

I see nothing wrong with white carpet and dark wood. Nora's bedroom is like that and it looks good.

Here are a few photos of my house.

Den:

photo-50 by Chihuahuaesque, on Flickr

Pub room (in process still):

photo-49 by Chihuahuaesque, on Flickr

photo-75 by Chihuahuaesque, on Flickr

Foyer:

photo-48 by Chihuahuaesque, on Flickr

Living room:

photo-46 by Chihuahuaesque, on Flickr