One of my favorite features of our home is that you can see from one end of the first floor to the other, and each space is sectioned with either French doors or an encasement – sometimes both! It’s the OG version of “open concept,” you know, before HGTV got ahold of the idea and beat it to death.
Since you can see from one end of our home to the other, cohesion across the color palette was a must, and extra attention had to be paid to maintain harmony between adjacent rooms. We also wanted all spaces that flow into each other without separation of a door or encasement to be painted or wallpapered the same color (as opposed to including an accent wall, or paint ending on a corner… which I am personally not a fan of). Fortunately, the only unenclosed area we have is our foyer, which leads up the stairs and connects with the main upstairs hallway. Truth be told, I would love to wallpaper this entire area, but it would be prohibitively expensive with the square footage we would need to cover. So, for now, the foyer, main stairwell, and main hallway upstairs will stay the nice neutral sand color it was painted before we moved in. Everything else? Fair game.
Below is our floor plan and color plan for the first floor as of today.
The first room we painted was our living room, and we used Farrow and Ball Cromarty. It is a silvery-sagey blue that flexes between looking icey and rich depending on the time of day and weather.
At the far end of the living room is our solarium. We have gone back and forth on what color to paint this room, and, although its not yet set in stone, we are leaning towards painting the walls/trim a dark and smokey green (perhaps, Green Smoke?). I love the idea of this room feeling like a visual continuation of our garden and yard, and while people have mentioned our plants will get lost amongst the green, that’s kind of the point. Keeping the ceiling a glossy white will also allow light to bounce around the room — during the day it acts as a mirror and rains reflected light on all of our plants. See below floor solarium floor tiles that floored me when we first toured the home.
In the center of the first floor is our foyer, I already described this space as being off limits because it is too much ground to cover. Off of the foyer is the “library,” which is where my office and our workout equipment have settled. This is is our “undecided” room on the first floor, and although we were initially thinking it would be a green room, after reviewing the full first floor color plan, I feel a bit like red is missing from the party! More to come.
Also adjacent to the foyer are two small areas that I refer to as the interior entrance and exterior entrance. After much debate (see below for our considerations), we pulled the trigger and ordered Farrow and Ball Bancha (for the interior entrance), which is a rich olive green, and Inchyra Blue (exterior entrance), which is a dark blue grey. A powder room lives off the interior entrance. The powder room is getting a face lift in the coming weeks, and we already selected wallpaper for the space.
The last adjacent space to the foyer is the dining room (more about our plans here). We have been really committed to using a pinkish brown in our home, and well, we went for it. At the last minute, I had doubts about this decision (should we paint it India Yellow? Oval Room Blue?), but Ross assured me we would always wonder “what if” if we didn’t stick with our hearts on this one. We will see if he’s right!
Through the dining room is our family room, which is currently painted a sage green. It doesn’t bother me all that much, so making a change is lower on our priority list. Eventually, we plan to paint the walls white and paint the trim black, which should compliment the gallery we are building out in this room well.
The kitchen is a 2023 project and will stay the pale powder blue it was painted prior to us moving in until we renovate.
Hot tip:
I am a sucker for the monochrome wall and trim look. A nice way to add dimension to a room when you go monochrome is to switch up paint finishes. We use matte on the walls (more durable and wipeable than a flat) and semi-gloss on the woodwork and trim. I would consider going high gloss in some areas, but it magnifies imperfections and our 113 year old home’s trim has plenty of those.
