It might be helpful to know that my ceiling is 9' tall (other rooms in my house are only 8') and there is a large, 6 panel bow window to the right as you face the fireplace. It takes up most of the north wall of the room.

Thanks!

I think I would play with pulling the darkest, darkest, darkest color from the stone work and color matching that color (close enough is good enough like horse shoes).

It's an interesting opportunity to anchor the room and expand the heft of that architectural feature, the fireplace/mantel.

Balance and proportion is out of whack - the FP/Mantel should be taller relative to the height of the wall. I don't know that for sure. I'm just guessing from the picture. :) All in an effort to prove my point that a darker color would facilitate better balance and proportion -- on the wall and in the whole of the room.

I do not mean to hy-jack this thread but am in a similar situation. Funcolors, you suggested to color match the wall color to the darkest color in the stone fireplace, which I think would be beautiful. My situation is somewhat different----my space is a north facing space with little natural light. I have 20 ft ceilings and my fireplace goes from the ceiling to the floor. My stone fireplace stone is very similar to this one. Based on my scenerio, what would be your suggestions for wall color---dark or light. Thanks----my apology treasuretheday, I do not mean to distract your post.

I think a dark color would look nice, and give your mantel some more depth. I agree the proportion of the FP looks weird, my guess is the stone wall which extends across the whole wall, should be just for the fireplace with a bigger mantel, on either side you could do built-ins, tall plants, etc...

gages,

I never worry about hi-jacking as long as OP doesn't get overlooked or dropped out of the conversation. And we can make sure that does not happen to treasuretheday. :~D

As you know if you've read the stuff I post, directional light is a huge factor in how I spec color for a space. A north facing room, like the other directions, has its unique opportunities and needs.

In your situation, I'm not concerned about north light for a couple reasons. If you have 20ft ceilings and an architectural feature scaled for that size of space, I'm betting you also have appropriate lighting to support it. If you notice treasuretheday has two eyeball spots for her FP too. So you have ample light accommodations for one dark wall in the space.

Also, darker color needs and likes space and volume to spread out. The more volume of space you have, the more daring and dramatic you can go with color. It is a ratio. Volume to visual assimilation.

The volume to visual assimilation ratio means when you take in the whole of the room visually, it is not likely that you will feel as though you are being swallowed by it because of the balance of volume. Still with me?

That's not to say that you WILL feel swallowed by dark, saturated, strong color in a smaller space.

Whether you feel that way about how a color effects the atmosphere of a room or not is determined by personal expectations and tolerances for color.

So, again, the point is the factor of volume means it is less likely for an individual to feel overwhelmed by strong color.

Now about the stone. The typical solution is to reach for a midtone or a "neutral" out of the stone. What happens is the darker color(s) end up being the only dark color in the whole entire space. Which can be interpreted as a balance issue - or maybe I should say an off-balance issue.

Going darker on a FP wall makes it into a true architectural feature wall instead of a single element and often brings a greater sense of balance to the entire area.

But it has to meet personal tolerances. I personally feel using dark color as I've described is the perfect solution to bring balance and cohesiveness to the core architectural shell of a room -- the bones.

That's what I think. It's not my house. So, as a professional it's not appropriate for me to say my way is the right way. My job is to give people options and ideas and fully explain all the reasons and logic behind each one. I load you up with manageable ideas and information so you can decide what rings true and is a good fit or what's not. The darker color on the FP might be a good fit for you and your space, it might not. You have all the right things in all the right places to make it a successful color choice.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Although I love the fieldstone, I have always struggled with the disproportionate width of the hearth and mantel.

I agree, Funcolors, the mantel should be higher than it is. You can see that pretty easily in this wider perspective of the room...

I have recently been considering incorporating some type of built-ins on either side to break up that long horizontal area. That is my long-range goal but for now (this week anyway!) I need to concentrate on the basics, paint colors.

So are you suggesting pulling out the darkest color in the fieldstone as an accent color for the wall area above the mantel only? I do like that idea but I'm not confident enough with choosing colors to pick that out on my own... perhaps with this Forum's help(??)

If we're just talking about accenting the area above my mantel, I might just have my painter use the primary wall color for now (tomorrow!) and wait until I have all of my new furniture in the room. When I am choosing accessories, I would feel more prepared to commit to a particular color. It would be very easy and inexpensive to have him come back and paint just that area. The fieldstone is both wonderful and frustrating because of the huge variety of colors and shades that it has... I could go in a number of different directions.

Sloyd, I'm not sure if you mean removing stones on either side of the fireplace(?) That would present some great opportunities and I'm slightly tempted but I'm not in a position to consider such a major project in that room. My entire house has been turned upside down with my masterbath reno!

I do still need to figure out a couple of things before tomorrow morning...

What is the rule of thumb (or design) for the space between crown molding and another lower molding like mine? Right now, it is painted to match the crown and trim, as if it were one large molding. Is that the preferred way to do it or would you put the wall color in that area and let the crown and smaller molding contrast? Any opinions on my proposed Kilim Beige on the ceiling and mantel and Divine White on the trim?

Oh, and no "hijack" worries here... I think your room sounds wonderful and I'm glad that there are people here willing to help both of us!

Thanks very much for your help!!

LOL... it looks like Cinder, our lab, is locked in her crate because the open door blends in with my couch. Cinder crate trained as a puppy and truly thinks of it as her private space so the door stays open and she goes in and out of it whenever she pleases. I'm ready to have it gone from my family room but I wouldn't do that to her... instead I'll be finding a place for it in our new room design!

I think I would paint the mantel a brown color (white looks too bright), have you visited your local SW or BM stores, most of the larger ones have a person who will help you pick colors, a couple days a week. Rather than rush into painting the room, I would find out what colors would work well in the space.

Thanks, Sloyd... Although by my posting questions the night before painting, I'm sure it does seem rushed, this has been in the works for several months. I had a decorator in to help me choose colors that we felt complimented the fieldstone and she then helped me choose fabrics for my sofas and chairs and also carpet. It's just me who is now questioning where each paint color should go(!) I agree with you, and this was one of the things that we talked about, the white mantel is way too bright against the fieldstone. I'm not sure I personally could go as dark as a brown color on the mantel but Kilim Beige would (I think) be a big improvement over white and still leave open lots of options for a deeper accent color on the wall above.

what would really look nice is a real thick natural wood mantel.

Oh, sorry I must of edited that part out when I cleaned up my post a lil.

The space between - paint it the same color as the walls because you need the visual height. Ideally, that rogue little piece of trim would come off. Not a good plan, IMO. But you can work with it.

As far as color. Ben Moore's Affinity Color called Wenge would be a good one. It's kind of a black/brown with an aubergine undertone. Could look yummy w/what you have goin' on. There isn't a decent representation of the color online. Have to get a sample to see its true nuance, characteristic, quality.

Sloyd... I completely agree and I would love a nice wood mantel but that's not an option, for now at least. ;-)

Funcolors... Thank you for helping me. I understand that I should be trying to add visual height but I'm trying to picture this and it's looking a little choppy in my head...

Kilim Beige - ceiling
Divine White - crown
Latte 125% - space between crown and trim
Divine White - trim
Latte 125% - wall

If it does look choppy, wouldn't that negate any benefit in continuing the wall paint all the way to the crown or are you suggesting that I paint that trim piece in the wall color as well?

As I've been thinking of this more, I feel like my decorator had said to continue the crown paint all the way down to the lower trim to give the illusion of one large molding. Do you think that would be a mistake?

Thanks for the suggestion of BM Wenge... I'm definitely going to check that out because I love the way you describe it!

I just heard back from my decorator and, although it's not optimal, we're going to paint the crown through the lower trim the same color. I don't want the small trim molding to stand out on its own but painting it the same color as the wall doesn't sound like the way to go either. I wish it would just go away, I suppose. I'll see how it looks... it's only paint, right?

Thanks!

How about doing a "faux wood" paint finish on the mantel? I don't have the expertise but I have heard of people doing it on metal doors and liking it.

I think you have to go with what feels right - you're standing in the room, we're not.

The problem (IMHO) is the math is off for the entire room. Lord, that's sounds awful doesn't it? lol! But it's really not that tragic. :) It just makes it harder to balance and distribute contrasts, texture, color, etc.

Math is a wonderous thing and is key in any kind of design whether 2 dimensional in a graphic or artistic sense or 3 dimensional in an architectural sense. Get the math right for stuff like crown widths, door height, mantle height, where light switches are placed, or whatever and it's a lot easier to decorate -- things just seem to *fall into place* with little effort or stress.

Thing is your room is (I'm guessing) just like the majority of rooms out there. The math is off. Happens for various reasons. Original drawings are altered to fit the lot, carpenters do one part while masons do another, and on and on. Often there isn't one person involved who knows about golden ratios passing calculators out to everyone and double checking this to that.

The trick to use wall space with varying widths of trim is a good trick to make moldings look more expensive and substantial but probably not necessary in a room with 9ft ceilings. Because the math doesn't work out right. That's why I suggested just taking the small bead of trim off.

But ya can't. So absolutely try it the way you think will fudge everything into feeling right. It can come out just fine and no one will be the wiser about the stuff that might not add up perfectly by the numbers.

Thanks, Funcolors, for your real-world advice. Our house was one of the last built in our neighborhood in the late '80's. The house was three years old when we bought it after falling in love with the full brick and classic Georgian colonial architecture. It was built on spec and the builder cut corners at every turn. I call it the "Remnant House" because it seems that the builder used all of his leftover building materials in our home... right down to two different color beige sinks in the guest bathroom and a garage door that was 6" too narrow to be a real two car garage door(!) He probably had some leftover trim molding and figured "what the h*ll, let's just put it up in the family room."

My room is being painted as I'm typing. I'll post pictures after the paint and carpet are done. Then, I'll be back to talk about that accent wall color and bringing some visual height in the room.

Oh trust me, I don't think you're alone. The stone and tile work in my house is absolutely exquisite. Everything about it makes me happy.

The trimwork on the other hand. . . I think it must have been done by Bud and Weiser.