Oh I'm sure I won't be able to pull off ALL white/cream rooms (even though I've seen them online and love them if they're done right). I also love white rooms with splashes of color. My floors will be hardwood, so that will warm it up a lot right there, and I will have a few aged wooden and metal accents here and there unless I decide to paint them all. It's all sort of evolving as I go along and I don't know how white it will be in the end. I love simple, clean farmhouse style and cottage (if it's not too fluffy) and will actually be living in a farmhouse. So will be incorporating rustic/vintage/aged pieces (junk!) and interesting textures throughout my home. The house I'm in now is fairly dark and my style until now has been dark. But I'm ready for a change, and am excited about having a light house (first time homeowner). The grass is always greener, I guess! I know white is associated with apartments, but I've never lived in a house with white walls (or very light) and want to try it out for awhile. Also, since I'm not actually living in the house yet I thought it was too risky to choose colors at this time. Next time I paint I may go with a completely different scheme, who knows. Guess I'm boring... I also prefer nuetral walls over colors at this point (even though I like other people's colorful homes). I find it easier to incorporate color through the home's furnishings than on the wall. Thanks for all comments so far and for helping this newbie out.

Thank you for your kind comments. Trailrunner: I love that chair too. It was a wedding gift to my maternal grandparents which would date it back to the late 1920's. My mother had it recovered several years ago as it is now, and then gave it to me. It is so beautifully worn, IMO. As for the fireplace, juddgirl, I posted a couple of closer-ups so you can see the brick. It is also worn-looking, with undertones of tan, gold, red, brown, and grey. This house was pre-owned, and we didn't choose the brick, but it works.

I've read that beiges will have an undertone of either pink/peach or green. Macadamia probably tends more toward green, but not as much as some beiges. In the SW fan deck, for the most part the shades on strip numbers lower than the Whole Wheat one tend toward pink/peach (with the Nomadic Desert being the least of those-ND looks like caramel to me). Those strip numbers higher than and including Whole Wheat tend to have the green undertones. Peachy beiges are tricky. I used Sand Dollar in my foyer which got very little natural light and it looked like a nice, neutral beige. I decided to use it in my kitchen which has large west facing windows, and it looked like refried beans - no lie. One thought with a basement space is to bring the "outdoors" in by using a creamy yellow (sun), blue (sky) or green (foliage). But the shades of each have to be right. Muted shades sometimes just look gray in a darker space. Do you have color corrected light bulbs? That will make a difference as well. Use them now while you are testing out paint samples.

Swing by Sherwin Williams and pick up one of their Arts & Crafts Preservation Palettes (only a few colors are shown online). Also, check out the Bradbury & Bradbury website, look at all the wallpapers (just for the colors) and finished rooms. If you have a California Paints dealer in your area, they've teamed up with Historic New England (formerly SPNEA, the Society for Preservation of New England Antiquities) to designate certain paint colors as best for certain periods; although most of their indications are for exteriors, the same colors were used for interiors as well. Thing is, for the most part A&C colors were deep and rich - mustards/golds, rusts, olive/forest greens, muddy plums - and the rooms were intended from square one to be on the dark end of the spectrum, somewhat denlike with welcoming pools of light here and there, rather than the almost blindingly bright rooms we are used to today. Instead of trying to "brighten" an extremely dark room with a lighter paint color (which can really drab out the color), try going for the midtone-to-deep color and using generous amounts of lighting instead. Make sure you allow for the undertone in the beige couch, too - beiges can be super tricky in that way, skewing to green or yellow, but an afghan or quilt over the back of the couch can minimize that. You can also swing by the library and see if they have any books on bungalows, or just google "bungalow colors". You may not have a bungalow but the bungalow was the predominant architecture of the A&C period. Now, that all said, if you want to go straight-up Mission, rather than leaning more toward the A&C end of the spectrum, although your furniture's stain colors are a bit light for it (fumed oak was the norm, which is quite dark) you can look toward the California Mission style, which has more in common with Spanish Colonial Revival than the English-influenced Arts & Crafts. Lighter walls (white or buff were common colors), dark trim, accents of intense colors (reds, sky blue - think Talavera tiles) and earth tones.