I have a high ceiling home. It was painted white entirely by the builder. I am tired of the white. I want to add colors to rooms. First of all, I have a tray ceiling in my bedroom. See the picture bellow:

I have seen rooms with tray ceilings always following some options such as painting the horizontal part of the tray the same color of the wall, painting different colors of the tray from the wall, and etc...

I like the white now, since the ceiling, the tray ceiling, and the wall are all ONE piece. They look unified and TALL. I bought the house mainly because its high ceiling character. I don't want to minimize the tall look of it. I like the option painting the horizontal part of the tray the same color as the wall. However, wouldn't the paint color, no matter what color I choose, divide the bedroom into two parts? What I want is to KEEP the TALL look of the bedroom, while I am not really care about if the ceiling is tray or not. What should I do?

Next question is about my living room. The living room, too, is white now. It has chair rail in the little entrance hall, dinning room, and kitchen breakfast area, with semi-glossy white at the bottom part. The entrance hall leads to the living room openly, to the dinning room, and to the kitchen. There are also columns. Interestingly, some columns have chair rails all around, whereas one only haa one side. I assume that the one with only one side is to coordinate the dinning room. see the picture below:

Because I probably would keep the white semi-glossy white below the chair rail at the bottom, but paint a different color above. If I don't add another 3 sides of chair rails, wouldn't it be strange to have only one side with white at the bottom. Now, since it's all white, it's not so noticeable. However, if I paint a contrast color, this odd looking column would be even odder. What should I do?

Please look at the rest of pictures to get a sense of the rooms. Please shed light with me. Thanks.

entrance hall