Ignoring the whole north-facing, dark room issue for a moment. How do you want your family room to look? Whatever you end up with, it has to be something that you like, not just what designers say you should do. All the color advice in the world is useless if you don't like the colors, shades or tones recommended. So my gut feeling is that if you mostly like creamy walls with white trim, then that's what you should do in this family room, instead of trying to embrace darker colors. Creamy, warm, white walls will certainly brighten this space, while darker walls may make you feel it is too dark. Short-term, a lighter colored area rug or two will brighten up the floor and make the room seems brighter and airier. Long-term, I'd invest in more lighting. Two chandeliers, if the room size is large enough. Wall scones, definitely. And a few floor and table lamps for task lighting. You've got dark floors. Stick to light colors on the walls and mid-tones for the furniture. I moved in to a house with one room painted a dark, navy blue. It wasn't cozy, it didn't warm up the room. The color just made the room dark. And no matter how many lamps I added to the room, the wall color just seemed to soak up all the light. It was either paint, or saw the room off the house. So my advice is that if you like light-colored walls, putting up a darker color in an already dark room will not work for you.

OK here's the DNA for each one. SW Gray Area 7052 has a LRV of 41 so pretty non-reflective color and on Eastern side of your home might look sad. It is in the Yellow Hue Family cool segment, so it won't go blue at all. You might be the "blue" one. Bad joke there, but I wouldn't do that color over there. BM AC-1 Coastal Fog has an LRV of 53 and it is in the same Hue family. It is lighter, but also won't go blue. A pretty Blue/Green might be worth considering, depending on your furnishings. Could you post some photos of the space and I can make some recommendations?

We painted our whole multi-floor townhouse (other than bathrooms and my daughter's bedroom) a single color, going with a shade of white that had a lot of yellow/orange, which was like letting in the sun everywhere! the painters even commented that it felt like we brightened the whole house, even though the average visitor would just see it as a white/near-white. If all your furniture is very cool toned, that might not work, but you could look for a warmer shade that still works -- like shift from gray toward taupe, or from khaki toward a lighter and yellower tone...

The world is your oyster. You have to decide what feeling you want when you walk into this room and what colors you want to use to portray that feeling. You have some great breaking points with the ledge and window sills, so you can change colors between under the windows, the sill, over the windows and the ceiling. . . Blue Green A soft yellow Pull in some deeper colors . . . or do 2 tone (Probably should have kept a white ceiling for this one) Do something unexpected like an iguana green and gray Pull in a peacock blue Or keep your white and use just the ceiling and trim to bring in some color. . .