Do you want to cover the knots in the wood or do you want them to show through the paint?

We are almost finished renovating a house with knotty pine on the lower half of the living room walls. The previous owners had painted the top a mellow gold, we replaced it with BM Grenadier Pond, a sage green. If the link doesn't work: Go the BM site, click on Personal Color Viewer, click on the photo of the mirror, choose Living Rooms and Sitting Rooms. Scroll through the sample photos until you get to the Bold Touches photo. There's a knotty pine armoir in the photo. You can play with wall color until you get one that you like against the pine. Have fun and post pictures. Here is a link that might be useful: Wall color and knotty pine

Short novel ahead... If it were entirely up to me, I'd go with white beadboard (a personal preference, and very "vintage"). We're in the process of installing beadboard in our own bathroom, and it's being painted white (we had a similar blue vs brown paint discussion, but went tan due to the shower tiles we picked out). Colored painted beadboard isn't unheard of - just a different look. Traditional colonial style often used trim painted anything but white - a lot of green, blue, etc. Most of the pictures of colored painted beadboard that I've seen were done with beadboard that runs 3/4 or the full height of the wall (rather than the waist-high stuff that I suspect you have). But that doesn't mean the decorating police are going to show up! Does it help you make a decision if you ignore the fact that it's beadboard? Talk about what types of "blues" it is that he wants - lighter? Darker? Greyed out? Vibrant? Green based? (I recommend raiding the paint chip bin, taking one of everything that catches anyone's eye, then start pairing them up - much easier than trying to describe colors verbally.) Once you have some ballpark colors, think about it like you were painting the wall above a chair rail one color, and the wall below the chair rail another. It then becomes a matter of where you want the darker color and the lighter color, since that can affect your perception of the room's size. Then you can pick the "actual" paint colors and test them (...says she who never test paint colors). With the marble floor, what about going a very light, almost white, blue-based grey on the beadboard that picks up a color in the floor. Then paint the walls above with a medium blue (also grey undertones). That would get some color on the beadboard without being too dramatic, and tie everything together. Your color options for towels would go up as well - anything from bright white to blue, grey, brown (vanity color), some combination thereof. And, in the end, the two things I always repeat to myself when remodeling with hubby.... 1. Who cares more about this? (aka "Is this worth arguing over?" LOL) 2. It's just paint! It's one of the cheapest and easiest things to change if you live with it awhile and are unhappy. Your bathroom sounds lovely!

What you most likely picked up was the plastic coated beadbord stuff mean to be water resistant in a bath. That needs to be scuff sanded and primed with an alkyd primer like the BIN.