You might think about mixing it up. For example, if your new home will have a study for DH, make it the way he envisions using rich, masculine colors. You might opt for painted (note I DIDN'T say white!) trim in an open great room/kitchen area. As long as the rooms don't "flow" directly into each other, feel free to do what feels right for the space. I have a rich pumpkin color in my study and find the white trim too stark. This weekend we will be painting it a deep taup or caramel (still choosing) that works with the wood tones of our furniture. We do not have a single light wall in our home- SW Blonde is probably the lightest

Hi Bevangel, our house has oak trim and doors and cabinets, etc. DH is adamant that we never paint any of the wood. When we moved in, every room but the kitchen was painted some shade of beige or white. I wanted COLOR! Here are a couple of pics that show the stained trim and painted rooms.

Ideally I'd love white as it's so clean and fresh but not in our lifetime at this house! Hope this helps.

SW Blonde

RL Kilim Red

RH Silver Sage (looks more green in real life, the flash lightened it in the pic)

I just posted my pictures on the "dining room table not centered" post. Burgundy walls, medium stained trim, dark furniture. Have a look.

Look in magazines and home improvement books. The public librairy would be a great place to start and get great ideas. White trim is fresh and clean looking, and can tie a whole house together if doors, trim, and molding are all white. However, they don't look so great when they are dirty or scuffed up by vacumes, children's remote control cars (my experience), and normal wear and tear. I think stained woodwork is classic, and will never go out of style. Scrapes and scratches just add character. My last two homes had stained doors and trim. I used whatever colors I pleased and they coordinated great. My kitchen was tan and terre cotta, my living room was tan with red accents behind my built in bookcases, halls were tan, but master bedroom was a warm, soft yellow. Good luck.

Don't have a photo to post but you certainly can have rich deep colors with stained woodwork.

I don't have a photo, but our TV room has stained trim with deep gold walls (one dark green wall) and the guest bedroom is faux painted (yes, I know it's out of style) a darkish gold with stained trim.

We like the effect. I love stained trim.

Stained trim and richly colored walls were a staple of the Victorian and Arts & Crafts design periods (~1840-1920)! Go to the bookstore and look at some books on Victorian homes and on bungalows - Jane Powell's books on bungalows are particularly good, as are Paul Duchscherer's (I hope I spelled his name right).

In my last house I had medium-stained pine trim in most of the house and medium-stained oak in the master suite. (I wanted the oak darker but we could not replace or restain the existing wood windows so I had to match them.) I used a midtone color in the living room - BM Wet Concrete - although I would not have minded going a little bit darker with that, and a bit-darker-than-midtone olive-gold in the master. The library was a medium peachy/yellowy beige, although I don't have any good pictures of that online now. The kitchen was supposed to be a deep billiard-table green and DH's office cobalt blue, but both ended up beige when the house went on the market. When the trim was painted white in preparation for that, there was suddenly way too much contrast with the walls and the midtone colors did not work as well as they had before.

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My new house was built in 1900 but unfortunately all the interior trim is painted cream; it's a mishmashy mixture of old and poorly-done new so going dark with the trim would be a major endeavor (and there are white vinyl windows to spoil the effect anyway). :-( I'm very much bumming about that because I don't really like white/off-white trim. I think it's going to restrict my color choices a lot more than the wood did (for some reason I never had any difficulty in finding colors that worked with the wood), since just glopping another two coats of paint on the trim will look gummy and bad.

I will have raspberry truffle in my laundry room and 1/2 bath. It's gorgeous! I also did a ceiling w/ Audoban Russet. Love it too! I'll get you some pics tomorrow! P.S. My GC told me that he gets stain grade trim from his supplier cheaper than he could get paint grade and finish it out. Go figure!

we have orangy oak, and i love having dark colors!

master bedroom is BM taos taupe.
basement is pittsburg paint (PP) seal skin.
living room is going to be PP granite (accent wall) and PP oyster shell (similar to BM alexandria beige).
1 bathroom is going to be BM mountain ridge (darkest color on the strip).
1 spare bedroom is BM baby turtle.

The lightest color we're going to have will be the computer room (BM gray wisp, = RH silver sage) just because i want something soothing for the eyes as we are in front of the computer a lot. The other light room will be kitchen/dining room (BM revere pewter) just because this is probably the darkest room in the whole house apart from the basement).

we were renting an apartment before so we didn't want to do any light beige/yellow! and we both really love how deep color looks on the wall. so rich but not bold.

The trick to combining wood with color is to remember that wood has a color too.

As ummm said, oak is usually orange; mahogany is pinkish or red, as is cherry.

Orange-y oak goes well with olive or sage green. This is because orange is a blend of red and yellow; green is a combination of blue and yellow; it's the yellow that ties them together.

Here is a room with oak and green:

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Just my opinion, but I don't think blue and orange go well together; orange is a blend of yellow and red; blue is a primary color, so there is nothing to tie them together, and you get a contrast that I don't personally care for.

Here is a bathroom with oak and blue:
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I have very, very dark stained quarter sawn oak wood trim in the downstairs & white painted upstairs in our 100yr old house. I've found the best color's on a paint strip w/ dark trim were middle to the bottom. So glad I wasn't able to talk DH into let me paint the downstairs white - I love the dark trim.

I also have stained (oak) trim throughout the house. We have BM Jamesboro Gold in our bedroom and it looks great. It's not really Gold, but it looks very green to me. I am currently painting our bathroom in BM Tucson Red and it also looks good with the stained trim. I painted our office in BM Hale Navy and I don't particularly like it with the wood as mclarke mentioned. It's on my list to repaint! It really makes the orangey oak look really orangey.

Oh WOW!!! You all have fully convinced me that DH isn't crazy after all. Thank you so much for sharing pictures of your beautiful rooms! DH is ecstatic that I have been won over.

We're going to go with a medium oak stain. Now to choose actual wall colors...

I was going to grab a couple of pieces of waste sheetrock, prime them and use them to test paint colors on. Figured I could hange them up in rooms in my current house that have windows facing in the same direction as the room in the new house and get a sense of how the colors will look as the light changes. Now I think I'll ask the GC to get me a piece of trim (stained and varnished) and attach that to my wall color samples as well.

Any suggestions on how best to pick colors (for connecting rooms) that will look good together?

Although, this might be darker than you are thinking of, these cabinets show that oak doesn't need to stained orangey.

Here's another old thread with some color ideas. Pretty!!

As for choosing colors that flow...I would start with your furniture and try to pull colors from there. I like warm earth tones myself. They always seem to flow together well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Stained Trim and Paint colors

The orange tone is due to the wood being stained with orange shellac. If the oak is stained with another product, there will not be orange tones.

"The orange tone is due to the wood being stained with orange shellac. If the oak is stained with another product, there will not be orange tones"

What tone will it have then? Most people don't treat wood with shellac. Most people use a final coat of varnish, lacquer, polycrylic or polyurethane. Some of these are slightly tinted, and some are not.

Most people no longer use shellac. If you don't stain it, using polyurethane or another protective finish will be clear. It should look more like the table and chairs in michelle's above photo. Look for a non-yellowing finish. Some finishes will tend to obtain a yellow tone after so many years. There is also a difference in looks between red oak and white oak. White oak will have a lighter color tone than red oak.

Here's some pics I took today. The laundry room color is more accurate in the first pic. And just in case you needed to see stained trim with easter egg colors, I included those, too! Haha! :)
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CATHRUGG- I'm begging you- could you please post more photos of your kitchen and eating areas???? I have a very similar set up with table and chairs, kitchen cabinet layout and French doors. I don't have a wall(that little wall that is to the right in your photo) partioning the dining area from the rest of the house and I'd really like one. It would be awesome if I could see more photos of that. What is beyond the dining area (to the right in the photo)?

We even have similar flooring and stained wood. :)

THANK YOU!
Astrid