First post here. Hoping to get some advice on me and my wife's first home and decorating. We'll take possession in a few weeks and are already trying to figure out how we want to decorate. The first thing we're working through is paint colors.

The house is a tudor and we would like to stay relatively true to that style. However, neither of us love rich, dark wall colors so we're struggling with that. My wife has always loved the idea of light and cheery, or even painting walls a neutral gray color and using pops of color elsewhere. But we also don't want to take a charming Tudor-style home and make it too "modern."

I've attached three pictures of the house to this message. One is of the outside so you have a feel for that, and the other is the living room and small dining room off the kitchen. As you can see, the previous owners have used a buttercream type of color. It's fine, but not our favorite. Also note, this isn't our furniture (we mostly have boring brown and/or wood furniture, but we'd like to change that over time).

Any help is much appreciated. I hope this is coherent; we're each pretty clueless about interior decorating!

Living room:

We used BM Mascarpone throughout our townhouse (which is a Spanish Mission style) and we're very happy with this color as a bright yet not stark color.

The BM marscapone looks quite nice, though I think my wife might object to it as too "boring." But it would be clean and bright, for sure. I like the idea of an accent wall for the fireplace. Any color suggestions there?

As for the brown furniture, we'll eventually move away from as we can afford new pieces. That's our goal -- less plain wood furniture and fewer brown couches and chairs. I think our ideal goal is something kind of like Anthropologie, though probably a little more clean than that. Painted furniture, occasional patterns, etc.

Thanks again!

Then -- after you paint the walls -- you could add color to the room decor with accessories like curtains, cushions or pillows for your furniture, artworks etc. Your brown furniture might just fit in very very nicely with the Tudor -- plus lots of fresh color and pattern will add an updated touch too!

From there, I'd look at small ways to add color before you replace your furniture. Rugs, pillows and artwork are all ways to bring in color. My furniture is all brown -- and while one day I'll replace the brown, for now, I am accenting with other colors-- my favorites are orange and bright green but sage, forest green, reds and blues would work too. All should work with the style of your house -- especially with brown furniture as the anchor.

If your windows are newer windows, they may not be wood. If this is the case and they are white, then white your trim will need to be. (such is the case with my 1931 colonial with 1990s vinyl windows.)

If your windows are original and wood, then they and the trim could be stripped, which is a ton of work and never fun. Or they could be painted in a trim color.

Even painting them a different white can sometimes make a big difference.

As to the walls, the yellow is not looking very inviting. It seems rather harsh and not very calming.

If you haven't already, go to the benjamin moore website. You can upload a picture of your rooms, and then "paint" them in different colors. This lets you see the actual floors and space with the paint colors.

And my friend who is a painter suggests that if you are in doubt, just stick to the benjamin moore historical colors, as they always look good. So that might be a fail safe way to go

Also, thanks to everyone here, I'm not feeling quite so bad about all of our brown furniture anymore.

I've seen BM paint mentioned in this thread and others quite a bit -- sounds like that's where we should start. Definitely seems to be worth the quality from looking around a bit.

And Mascarpone is a lovely neutral white, too.
If the Mascarpone reads green in your light, look at Mayonnaise, which is creamier, but also luminous.

Whatever you choose, buy their top of the line paint. In the long run, the difference in cost is nothing (particularly since two normal coats is probably all you will ever need), and the difference in quality is everything.

For historic homes, using a slightly darker color on the trim vs the walls is more in keeping than the very bright white trim currently popular.

I would stick with off whites, like Halo or Cotton Balls by BM, or take a look at Farrow and Ball colors (their colors can be mixed in any paint if you do not want to pay FnB prices). Don't forget to sample the colors first --- look at it in different light and do at least a 4ft sq if you can.

You may also want to look at American Clay (they can custom mix very light off whites). We used it in our entry and MBR, and I like the depth and variation (we went with the most subtle ... i dont think it photographs at all, but it is really nice in person)

A warm white is cheerful and neutral without being too modern, and it is definitely in sync with Tudor style since the exteriors are cream.

Also, the orginal owner had painted my wood work white too. I started striping all the doors and had intended to strip all the wood work but after doing the doors I rather liked the white trim with the dark doors and stopped there. It was a common look in the 20s to have white mouldings with dark doors if you are not up to stripping all the wood work.

You all have such beautiful homes! Roarah, I love your trim and the slightly darker paint color you used; and tinan, your townhome is so bright and airy. I also love that staircase.

Unfortunately, now that we've gotten all this good advice, I'm sad to say that yesterday the sellers waffled on some promises they made to fix items (we're still in inspection period), and we had to walk away from the deal. We're pretty bummed to lose the house, but taking on the repair of a faulty sewer waste line and several other things wasn't in the cards for us. I guess it's all part of the process.

Still, I appreciate all of the help. I've already learned a lot from everyone here, and hopefully I'll have a new, new home to show off soon enough. :-) Thanks again.