well the day finally came and went with not too many hassles. In the house a week now and Magnolia is starting to do my head in (house been up three years and they have never changed it from the builders paint) so on with the decorating! The previous owners also kindly left us holes all over the walls badly filled with hole filler and then slapped fresh paint over them, we counted 29 holes in the bathroom! Every wall is the same throughout the house. They also left us wires tacked to the skirtings with blue tac and slapped over with gloss paint (who does that!?) the list goes on!
Trying to chose colours (carpet quite a dark shade of cream) but I am not sure whether to go with similar colours throughout and just bring in different colours in each room with accessories etc, instead of going for say one room painted green, one blue, one cream, one yellow and so one.
Has anyone successfully run similar shades of the one colour through the house and did it work?
All advice opinions welcome!

My ex had lilac throughout his house. I thought it looked like a showhome. That, apparently, was his aim. Not for me I'm afraid.

How about different colours in different rooms to match the 'mood' of the room? Bright and airy in kitchen, warm and cosy in the living room, peaceful in the bedroom? Or a theme of sorts of shades of or contrasting shades in different rooms?

Have a look on the dulux website (just google it), they have lots of ideas for colour schemes and what goes with what or what contrasts with what.

What about a pale cream throughout, but with one wall in each room painted a different colour? That's what I intend to do.

Try consulting Kevin McCloud's book called "Choosing Colours" - pages and pages of beautiful colours and ideas for combining them. Also very intersting for the background and historical info on each colour. (And it even tells you which colour the lovely Kevin has in his bedroom!!) I got it for Christmas and it's been my favourite book ever since.

I definitely think you should have colours that you like as opposed to what's fashionable or whatever. When we bought our house, the living room was pale yellow, the kitchen a nice green, the hall lilac (don't ask!), the bathroom red, my housemate's room blue and mine white. We were really happy with it, but last year decided eveything looked tired and we would redo it.

Now, we have everything different shades of cream except my housemate's room which is green and the bathroom which is a pale blue. We both found we were just veering towards the creams, maybe as a reaction to all the colour before, I'm not sure.

On thing though, if you do all creams or whatever, we had to use different shades because something that we tested in the living room looked awful, quite cold and grey, but the same in the hall was a warm and sunny cream - due to the light I presume. We are the proud owners of 4 differently-creamed rooms!

the problem I am having with the cream is my creasm carpet doesn't seem to go with any of the cream shades! Maybe I am being too fussy!
I liked the idea of the showhouse look but other half doesn't I'm afraid!
Thanks all!

i hate moving

If you go to the Crown website they have a program you can download and then use your own photos of your rooms to try out different paint colours. When you select one colour it presents you with others that blend or contrast. Of course there is some variation in colour and I still felt that I needed to buy tester pots to get a real idea of the colours but its a starting point.