The remodelling is continuing and the rooms are taking shape. Now I’ve started giving some serious thought to wall finishes and colours. (The floors we have already pretty much decided: pine plank in the new living room and the office, to match the existing living room. And honey-coloured tile in the entry hall and the walk-in closet, same as in the mud room.)

At first I had simply assumed that of course the walls will be white. I now realize I thought this way mostly out of inertia and laziness. All the walls were white when we moved in so I’ve gotten used to that look, and it requires very little thought. But when I started thinking about it, I realized that what I’m doing is just postponing the issue. We will have to decorate and furnish the rooms, and that will NOT be done all in white, so I will have to choose colours anyway.

When I think about houses, homes and other rooms I’ve seen, it’s not the white ones that I have strong memories of. I remember our yellow striped living room from Enskede. I remember the dark brick walls from our flat in Constantine Court. When I look at photos of rooms, I’m rarely attracted by the ones with white walls.

Then I found a blog post about how white is a snob, quoting from a book:

Bad white spaces are those where white is not used as a colour but in the misguided notion that it is the avoidance of colour. This is when white looks bald and empty, cheap and unfriendly. Or it can look unfinished, a beginning still waiting for something to happen!

And that is exactly how the white walls in our house have felt. Bald and empty, waiting for something.

Now I’ve spent several hours browsing through the archives of the blog, Colour Me Happy, and found much food for thought. Why you need a starting point for your colour choices. How to think about colour flow in your house, and an example of how to achieve it. How a light colour will NOT make a dark room lighter but just accentuate the shadows. How to test the colours you’re thinking of using. All this is shown and explained with lots of photos. Now I don’t think there was a single interior there that I really loved, but that’s not the point. I loved the thinking.

Do you have any advice on choosing colours for a home? I have the beginnings of an overarching colour scheme in my head but would still like to hear your top tips.