Recommend me some paint and flooring

[Rward]

I'm looking at repainting and flooring my place and need some paint/colour advice.

For the paint, I've got very high ceilings and only get some morning sun so I'm looking at those 1000 variants of white else the apartment could be too dark.

For the flooring I'm looking at wooden/laminate stuff in a 'warmer' colour.

The only set colour so far is my kitchen which is in Canadian Maple.

What do you have and do you wish you never had it?

[GloriousMess]

One thing I've found after very recently painting a room is that brilliant white isn't that brilliant, and patching over existing white is probably fine. However, it's not a great colour for large surfaces (walls) that should draw the eye.

For off-white, I recommend something like Natural Calico (a Dulux colour if I remember correctly) as it's a nice balance between calm, warm and not glaringly nasty.
If you have high ceilings then there might be an issue with warmth - high ceilings allow hot air to rise further, perhaps making it feel colder in the room. A warmer colour than one you initially select might work to counteract that, but I can't really speak from experience other than being in someone's high ceilinged room and feeling a little chilly. They had white walls.

Incidentally, the further 'up' the colour chart for a particular shade the darker the colour dries on the wall. If you go for something really warm, it'll be darker than you think, especially with a lack of sun. Getting a decent bulb or lightshade is going to help too.

I'd just like to add that if you end up coating your walls in Viscera Red and complaining that it's too rich a colour, I'm not to blame. Also I will be informing the authorities.

edit: oh, an important lesson: don't put testers straight onto the wall you're going to paint unless you are sure that wall is going to be quite dark. Testers will show through at least one, possibly two coats of a lighter colour and even then you might see a faint trace of it. Use paper taped to the wall as an alternative. You may know this already but it never hurts to pass on a good tip.

[Omniscia]

I'm looking at repainting and flooring my place and need some paint/colour advice.

For the paint, I've got very high ceilings and only get some morning sun so I'm looking at those 1000 variants of white else the apartment could be too dark.

For the flooring I'm looking at wooden/laminate stuff in a 'warmer' colour.

The only set colour so far is my kitchen which is in Canadian Maple.

What do you have and do you wish you never had it?

My folks had some Alloc laminate flooring (I think they went with Japanese cherry, or something like that) a few years ago, and it's held up remarkably well. Looks great, and not a scratch on it, so far.

I also hear good things about bamboo flooring. It's cheap, durable, and renewable. No personal experience with that, though.

[Lorini]

Honestly, if I were you, I'd invest in a online subscription to Consumer Reports which covers both of these topics pretty thoroughly.

[Brendan]

I'm looking at repainting and flooring my place and need some paint/colour advice.

For the paint, I've got very high ceilings and only get some morning sun so I'm looking at those 1000 variants of white else the apartment could be too dark.

For the flooring I'm looking at wooden/laminate stuff in a 'warmer' colour.

The only set colour so far is my kitchen which is in Canadian Maple.

What do you have and do you wish you never had it?

If your curtains are neutral, I'd suggest a colour called Coastal Cream (Also by Duluxe I think). It's a creamy beige but not asylumly so.

I also suggest that if you have no pets or kids you get the plushest carpet possible for your bedrooms and ban shoes completely.

[Ben Sones]

White is not necessarily a good choice if your aim is to make a room feel bright. It reflects a lot of light, sure, but it's important to keep in mind that we process color and value in relative terms, not in isolation. So while white walls will reflect a lot of light, they will also make everything in the room look darker and heavier--furniture, art, etc. That is not to say that you need to go with a dark color, but even toning things down a little bit with a color or neutral that is a step or two down the paint chip can, almost paradoxically, make a room feel brighter.

In a room that gets little direct light, I think that having light-colored floors is more important than having light-colored walls. Most of the lighting coming into the room is going to be ambient light from the sky reflecting off the floor.

[Athryn]

Go to a paint store and pick out colors you like. The people that painted our house use Sherwin-Williams paints, so we went into their store and picked out a neutral that we liked, and we decided to paint our bedrooms a couple of different colors. We went with 3 colors that are harmonious, so when you do go upstairs to the bedrooms, the colors aren't a huge shock.

Start here in my photo set and continue to the right, those are the pictures of the place after painting. We went with Fleur de Sel as our neutral, with Dockside Blue and Willow Tree for the bedrooms, and eggshell white for the trim, which makes it pop (I hate when people paint houses and paint the trim the same color as the walls.)

You can go to a paint store or Home Depot/Lowes etc, and take home paint chips and often little sample cans that you can try on the wall. Make sure you look at them at different times of day and under different light. The reason I like the neutral we picked in particular is under some lights it's off white and other lights you get a pale blue tint.

I personally went with a cool neutral because every place I've lived in until now has had warm neutrals, and to me, they have a tendency to make the walls look dirty.

[Rward]

Thanks for the advice everyone,
I'm checking the pictures and taking a list of colours down to the shop.

I'm also looking at doing the 'trim' (skirting boards?) a different colour to the walls.

[GloriousMess]

White skirting boards are almost universally ok, but with a dark carpet I would suggest painting the skirting boards an in-between colour to make the leap from light walls to dark carpet not so sudden. For wooden flooring, skirting boards the same colour and type of wood as the floor look, in my opinion, awful. We have it in the kitchen and it's on the list of things to sort.

tip: for painting skirting boards use gloss and get some GOOD masking tape. You do not want that stuff on laminate flooring! (or the wall)