Boy that's a good question Alisha. I did a virtual to help you out.
It's really hard to say since the base trim looks like part of the floor without the buffet sitting on it. Do you know what color wall they're planning for this room? Maybe someone with a better program than mine could add to this to make it more realistic.

Are they leaving the wood stained? The baseboards are nice and thick and would look beautiful painted white with the moulding above also white. I wouldn't hesitate to suggest painting all the trim white. It would transform the room!

Thanks, Justgotabeme! I wish I had a better pic. She talked about red at one point. They like warm colors and especially the golds, reds, and greens.

Kmcg - I'm pretty sure they don't want to paint the base. Would it look weird to have wood base in some areas and not in others? Again, I'm thinking yes. I actually don't know if I would either. Here are the doors attached to the room.
{{!gwi}}
The house needs lots of TLC. Some of the stuff the owners tried to "fix" or add and they'll have to replace, iykwim. But other things like the stairs and all the interior doors seem to be original, old and nice looking.

Here's what most of the interior doors look like. There are a few that are a slightly different style but same overall loook.
{{!gwi}}
This is one of the rooms upstairs. You can see the replaced the trim and base and painted the back of the door. They also slopped paint around and got it on the hardwood. Guess they never heard of drop cloths.

Alisha, After rethinking I'm thinking it could work if they keep the base trim stained and stained the chair rail like this.....

As you can see I used the colors you said they wanted in their home. I think it's very doable.

By the way I couldn't tell if the dining room had painted crown molding or not, but I added stained crown because it looked more like there was a stripe at the top of the red walls in the virtual.

Justgotabeme - Thank you! I'll show them the mock ups. I think it could maybe work with the stained chair rail. I think it's going to look odd with with everything white except the base though. I'll let you know when they end up deciding.

Checking to see if you'd seen this yet and I realized you said they wanted white. Duh! I knew that when I did the first virtual, but when I started adding color I just did the golden white instead so here it is with white picture molding. I really like it with the base left stained and the chair rail stained along with stained crown.

To answer your question re: rooms done in different finishes: it's not uncommon to see a study/DR/etc done in all wood while other rooms may have all white trim.

It looks like they have 8' ceilings so I think to add the mix of white and wood is going to chop up the room. If they want picture molding then I'd used stained wood to match the baseboards or just do a stained chair rail. If they want white, then paint everything white.

It's not a great pic but the link is an example of stained molding.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Annz, I thought about that too, but if you look at the second picture Alisha posted, with the french doors, it looks as though some sort of drop ceiling was added so there's a possibility they could remove the lowered ceiling and have nine or ten foot ceiling that one usually saw in a home this age.
Even if they don't raise the ceilings a wainscot, or raised panel, is only one third of the height of the total ceiling height so it wouldn't chop up any more than any other size wall. Well at least in my opinion. I can see where someone else might think it would. Personally I'd prefer the stained raised paneling in our home, but I like the look of it painted too. It's especially nice if you're on a budget because as Alisha mentioned they plan on using picture molding where you just paint it and the wall to get that look.

I tend to also agree with annz; though in this situation, I think it would look lovely to paint the added mouldings the same as the wall color and leave the trim alone for now. Similar to what scoobyruby did when she repainted her dining room and painted all the white picture frame mouldings the same as her walls. It's a more subtle look that would work well with the stained trim. I don't think it's a given that the ceilings could be raised; there may well be plumbing routing through them, In any case, that would be a significant project, and more than they want to take on or can afford when there seems to be many other more pressing items to address.

Since the trim looks old, I'd think about it seriously before rushing into painting it. Esp. as it looks like there is a lot of other work to do as well as cleanup from the PO's shabby attempts at updating. Once your painted the trim you cannot go back, plus it's a lot of work; so I'd suggest they live in their house for a while, work on other things first, paint, wallpaper removal, etc. and see how it looks once it's cleaned up; then decide.

Annz - Thanks for linking to that pic. I saved it to show them!

Justgotabeme - The first ones were close enough to white for me, thanks!
That ceiling is only in that LR area if I remember right but I doubt they'll mess with raising it. There's an upstairs to the place so I'm trying to figure out how that would even work. Sounds very messy.

Val - Oh yeah, Scooby's room. I'll show them that also. They were talking the other day about just adding a chair rail only. I think it would also be wise for them to live in the house for a while before doing anything like that. They'll sure have enough to keep them busy. Listen to me... what is that saying? Do as I say, not as I do. :)