Here's an inspiration site to give you some ideas .....

Also look for inspiration piece FIRST -- and then go for colors and ideas --- like artwork or a rug etc. ......

Here's a hot link to Phoebe Howard's website -- an incredible designer with fresh but traditional ideas .... hope this helps too!

Jan

Here is a link that might be useful: Phoebe Howard designer website

Here's another link to a great page with sofa styles -- again -- just for ideas to get you started ......

Here is a link that might be useful: Mitchell and Gold sofa styles

Are you asking for fabric colors or wooden furniture colors? Your color scheme sounds like the one I have in my new house. I think I'll go with cream coaches too, but not sure. The accent colors I will use will be the pale green from the kitchen that adjoins the family room and touches of blue from the master that can be seen from the great room. For furniture I have chosen to go with mahogony on my dining room table and chairs that is essentially in the same room, but would like to lighten things with some lighter pieces for the coffeee table. With your backdrop you really can't go wrong with any color furniture. What will matter is what style you are going for and that will dictate some color choices also.

Thanks for the links and suggestions--this is new to me, so I'm learning day by day (used to live in NYC where lack of space meant no need to worry about design!).

I am talking more about fabric colors--our living room is adjoined to the family room so is not connected to the kitchen. Dining is on other side of stair case (house is center hall colonial) and will likely be beige/taupe. I had not thought of using accent colors based on other room shades.

My style is traditional, classic and subtle. As we have little furniture to start, it'll be built around a few quality pieces, so right now cream couch is all I have to work with. I saw a picture from Traditional Home of a pale yellow living room (couch and drapery) with a reddish-burgendy offset (chair and cushions) with some touches of cream. It was actually quite striking. Otherwise, I've heard pale blues and greens work well with pale yellow--but I'm still mulling it all over and looking for suggestions.

janine, the reason you want to incorporate colors from adjoining rooms so the rooms flow and don't look disjointed or unrelated.

You need something to give you inspiration or know what feeling you want the room to have. Colors are alive and can make a room feel cozy, alive, calming, etc. Do you have artwork that you will be putting in this room? what about a rug?

At the current time no rug or artwork. Really starting from scratch. I do have a photo that I consider inspiration, but not sure about flow to other rooms in the house. Our house is very small, and living room only connects to family room currently.

How do I upload a photo?

Fist get into the message portion of your post before doing the actually copying.

First put your photo's in photobucket. After the photo's are loaded, you run the curser over the photo you want to upload, from top to bottom, and some prompt's will appear below the photo. Go to the third one (Sorry, I don't even know what it says), click on it, it should highlight, go up to page on your screen, touch it, then when prompt for copy comes up,hit it, to back to your page that you have opened in the thread, hit page, then paste A bunch of giberish will show up in the message. Hit preview and then your photo will show up.

I hope this is clear.

teacats: thanks for the link!

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}

I used a tone-on-tone yellow for the sofa and window treatments. My living room is small and has a piano. But I got bolder with the orange chairs (I originally thought they were more coral in color). I wouldn't mind cream chairs with nice pillows, actually--I would probably do that next but with this dog of mine and her wanting to look out the windows, we'll keep the current a little longer.
I've rearranged the top of the secretary and added a tray with the orange colors, took off the overbearing greenery. Phone is gone, and I am inspired by reno-fan to lighten up the back of the secretary.
I do want a different rug, something larger, but I like the touch of black with the pale yellow.
Enough of my rambling, just wanted you to see the black and coral(?) accents.

sallymo,

thank you for the pics--lovely! The orange actually looks similar to what I was describing although I thought of it as more red (just as an accent and with a pattern that includes some floral pattern to compliment the yellow/cream themes). Do you happen to know the shade of paint?

Anyone else who has LR to share, that'd be great!

sally, I never get tired of looking at your house, it's so beautifully decorated.

janine, did you try to load any photo's?

Our LR--also not large-- is yellow, creme, crayola red, and bits of black. There is a den visible from the LR. The den's walls are red, with lots of creme trim.

I was not able to figure out how to post a photo--just don't see where I on the page I can upload? Sorry, I must be dense on this one!

delta, I love the red. I was originally going to do red, and somehow the colors evolved---one choice leads to another type of thing---and it became more coral/orange. Your black piano is just stunning. I wish my end wall would allow a piano, but the windows really break up my space.

janine, I'm sorry, I skipped a step. First you have to laod them on to your computer. I just assumed you had already done that. Then you set up the photobucket account. Then it brings you to a page and on the right hand side you see in big letters BROWSE and a blank to the left. Hit the upload prompt, it will bring you to your memu for you to get to where ever you have your photo's filed. Find a photo, mark it and it will be uplaoded to Photobucket. You can then load another, and another. When finished, hit the UPLOAD prompt, You'll see on the screen as it's uploading. There are better instructions than what I just gave you somewhere on this website. Let me see if I can find them.

I am loving the pale yellow with red and touches of cream and black. If our family room is a cream or light beige, would that be ok? It's the only room slightly visible from the LR.

November 2008 Traditional Home cover was my inspiration for the scheme--i am unable to copy and paste as it is not my own image, but it can easily be searched.

That coral/red looks awesome. I think another color that accents well against pale yellow is a deep/bright turquoise blue.

Janine, I looked at the cover you like. Really pretty. I don't see why having a cream or beige FR would be a problem. Just pick a beige that looks o.k. next to pale yellow. In my LR, for example, we have a beige-taupe chair and a goldish couch. It all works.

Most of the rooms in my house are yellow or very vivid colors (blue, red, or teal). For reasons I am not sure about, though, we painted two baths deep tan. One of baths (the downstairs one) almost always has its door open (so you see the color while standing amid all the yellow). It isn't a problem.