I second what Funcolors just said about using Superpaint on the ceiling. I just did all my ceilings in Superpaint mixed to SW Alabaster and it went on easy, with minimal dripping. I ran out before I finished the kids closets and bought HGTV mixed to flat Alabaster and it's just not as nice to use.

I have my main living areas and my teenage son's room painted SW Maison Blanche and I love it, planning on Nantucket Dune for some accents. I don't think you should worry about those, they're nice neutrals. My teenage daughter's room is a deep aqua that I was worried about, but came out beautifully SW 6485 Raindrop. My husband's office is a dark blue, we used SW Needlepoint Navy SW0032. It's on the Historical Collection palette card. We're using Dover for trim.

And I don't know how many sample pots I bought. And they look different in every room, natural light makes a big difference. And I used 2 coats of Superpaint all satin finish. (But I dislike shiny finishes.) It all came out very nice.

Picking colors took me forever! Good luck!

sweet-tea: How would you describe SW Maison Blanche? Thinking about this color as well but have not sampled yet. Thanks----sorry did not mean to hijack this thread.

Funcolors, Thank you so much for your insights on the color selections! It is a relief to hear that the wall colors of SW Nantucket Dune and SW Maison Blanche are OK.

We are following your suggestions to do a SW Creamy ceiling instead of the SW Restful White. The two are very similar and restful white looks whiter than creamy to me. But my wife said she does not like a yellowish ceiling.

We still have time for the interior trims/doors but we are seriously considering pure white you suggested. We examined dover white, aesthetic white before.

Still need to figure out the 2 kids bedroom and the baby room. As we just let the kids pick their room colors by themselves and I do not think they have a lot of clues there, we need to step in to give them some help by revisting their decisions. Personally I do not like the ibis white. We would look at the Blue Drizzle SW1487 for my daugther's room.

I am starting to get why semi-gloss over orange peel would not work. It would expose all the imperfections in the random texture itself. Am I right?

Both the painter and the salesperson are getting me into oil for interior trims. Now I am not sure. Oil is harder to do but more durable; Becomes yellowshish and harder to touch up?

I have seen a lot of good reviews about superpaint but we may need to use some of the ceiling paint just to save cost. I do insists primer plus two topcoats for both wall and ceilings. The painter and builder was still talking about two coats without primer for ceilings. I ready for the upcharge there.

There is a lot of information that we need to digest and but we do we need to make decisions pretty quick.

Sweet-tea: Thank you for you comments and that frees me from some of the worries about our wall color selections. I would look into your blue colors for the three kids/baby bedrooms.

Gagesgranny, It says light grayish orange on some online color description. I do not know how to describe it even after I did some test painting on the walls.

Thanks again!

Gagesgranny- I think Maison blanche is a very soft beige neutral, too me it doesn't read a lot of undertones, not too pink, not too yellow. I'll attach a pic. It's not very good, we're still in construction.

Jeff: Thanks, guess I better sample.

Sweet Tea: On my monitor it looks brownish which I am looking for. Thanks so much. Guess I will grab a sample. Which room are you using this color in?

Gagesgranny- It is a nice beige. I actually have it in my living room, hallways, kids bath and my teenage son's room. The living room faces north, one hall and my son's room have windows on the south, and one hall and the bath have no windows. It looks great in every room to me. I really like it. It's just enough without being too much, if that makes sense.

Here are some excellent blues to consider for the kids' rooms (all are SW). It seemed from your post you were leaning towards blues for the kids' rooms. I am not sure how saturated of a colour you are looking for. The below list is all tried and tested good wall colours in the blue family.

SW Needlepoint Navy SW 0032 rich navy with some green
SW Sea Salt (light greenish blue - aqua)
Hinting blue -- SW 6519 a very light blue for baby's room?
Notable blue SW 6521 - very light blue baby's room?
SW Storm Cloud (dark grey blue)
SW 7621 Silvermist (greenish blue)
SW 6477 Tidewater (greenish blue)
SW 6541 Daydream (blue with purple)
Dutch Tile Blue 0031 and Moody blue SW 6221 are both blue/teals
Online SW 7072 and Krypton SW 6247 are also very light grey/blues

Carol

Note: Totally agree with posters who are saying avoid the oil based paint and you probably don't need a semi-gloss for walls.

Thanks everyone for the comments. I am back with some updates on interior paints/colors and have a new question regarding exterior trim color.

1. NO semi-gloss on orange peel texture. We decided to go with SW SuperPaint satin finish for the all walls.

2. No oil-based paint. We also switched to SW PProClassic Waterbased Acrylic-Alkyd for doors and trims.

3. We are still playing with the different colors for the kids bedrooms. We have a lot of good blue colors to look at now. We need inputs from kids to decide colors for their own rooms but they definitely need some guidance and supervision on the selection.

Now the question regarding the exterior trim color. We are using SW Duration exterior paint Satin finish. Would SW 7038 Tony Taupe work for our house?

It is brick house with metal roofs. All brick walls and columns, no stone. Red/monroe bricks with gray and orange/peach accent marks. Red/purple mortars. The metal roof has a color of burnished slate. It is a very dark color probably with some gray/brown/or green inside. The closet match I found from SW is 7675 Seal Skin. The roof pitces are from 3:12 to 5:12 with overhang of 24".

Our vinyl windows are white. The window trims are not installed yet. We are thinking of stucco over foam or light weight cement.

We have two ideas of paint colors for the exterior trim.
1. A dark color to match to /blend with the metal roof. Or something close. Since the low pitched roof has a big size of 24" overhang, we are concerned that a dark color might make the roof look too heavy.

2. A light color to act as a transition between the roofs and the bricks.

I see a lot of red houses with white colors in our area but we decided not to go too white. Since there are some colors of gray on the bricks, we focus on the grays from SW.

Right now, our choice is SW 7038 Tony Taupe. The paint is putting on primer based on that color but I think we can still change if we need to.

Thanks again!

Hi Jeff,

You might want to post a picture of your bricks and the other exterior colour choices you have made (i.e. shingles,door, mortar, etc). I don't know SW tony taupe, but proceed with caution if it has pinky beige undertones. Pinky beige does not play well with other beiges (i.e. greeny beige or yellow beige). Our siding is a taupe and when we insalled stone steps the greeny beige tone of them did not play well with the taupe siding and now I regret it.

When it comes to something as important as exterior colour choices, I would recommend getting some expert advice. There is an online colour expert that only charges $25.00 to help you put together a colour plan for the outside (she does interior too). Her name is Barbara Meglis and she calls herself the color coach. She might be worth a go for the exterior. We used her services for some of our colour decisions.

Carol

I agree with Ontariomom, if you could post a pic of your exterior that would help. I'd hate to try and guess.

Here are some pictures I just took from the site.

1. Frontal view of the house with metal roofs (bottom unfinished) , brick walls, and windows. Window trims not on yet.

2. Close up view of metal roof panel against brick wall w/ mortar

3. Three test sample colors on the roof trim.

4. Close up view of SW 7038 Tony Taupe sample color

The painter has chosen a dark primer to go with Tony Taupe. We can still change if we need to.

For me, I was hoping for more warm colors (red/orange/peach) in it. However, wife was thinking of something darker and daughter prefer a lighter one.

Thanks for your inputs!