Picking Colours

arseagon

Ok i'm helpling my dad renovate an old house and the time has come to choose the paint colours. Now he's a very stubborn man and for the hallway, stairs and landing he chose "Corn" and "terracotta" (top half light colour/bottom the darker) it's yellow and orange in my opinion. Some of it is painted and I think It looks absolutely terrible for the basic reason that the dado rail and skirting boards are painted with gloss white which stands out like a sore thumb.

So how about some suggestions for good natural looking colours that will go with the white dado and skirting as these were previously painted and neither of us have the will to strip them?

Wertz

Colours are a very subjective thing that has to be down to the person who'll live with them.
Corn and terracotta don't sound like a great combo especially on split walls.

There's so many ways of fixing this without changing the colours he picked; you could do most walls corn top and bottom and pick out walls in the terracotta, perhaps change the colour of the dado and skirting to a cream or something to compliment the corn, maybe use satinwood instead of gloss (no need to strip, just rub down well and fix any black spaces). You could also "hide the woodwork by painting it the same colour in a different finish...

If you just want to change the scheme completely then I find the best way to pick top and bottom colours is to get any colour card and pick any two colours that are 2 shades apart. Contrasting between top and bottom really only looks good with certain combinations and depends on the amout of light, the size of the space, floor coverings, stuff like that...

arseagon

Thanks for the reply wertz,
It's probably going to be me and a couple of lodgers in the house but to himself that doesn't mean my opinion counts at all. :rolleyes:

But nevertheless I sat him down at the comp and showed him some better colours (for me anyway) on the mouse painter thingy on the dulux.ie website. Couldn't believe it when he agreed with me.