Unless you want a very neutral white everywhere, it's best to wait until you've moved in with your own furniture. Then you can test paint samples on the wall in different wall conditions to really understand what you want. With the tans in your carpet and kitchen please stay away from grey colors. But you have a lot of options with different colored tints of whites, creams, greens, blues, etc.

Wait until you move in. Limit yourself to one color.

Most of all ? Don''t junk up the joint with clutter as these photos. I'm surprised you could see past all of it, to buy the house : )

Really those pictures are useless and IMO that fireplace is too so I would wait until you are in and have your stuff there . I know it is a pain but paint color needs to be chosen to go with what you have and right now nothing will look right.

Yes, brighter & cleaner. Don’t try to decorate the tall ceilings.... put artwork, etc. at human scale. With tall ceilings you can scale the furniture & art ( e.g., larger pieces of art ) a little different than in rooms with low ceilings.

As others have commented, move in, choose your furniture and then paint with a color you have picked based on that furniture. This is much better than painting first even though more complicated.

Are you keeping the beige carpet? Will you need scaffolding to paint?

Honestly, this place is bright. Large windows, light wall colour. There's nothing inherently dark and cramped about this space except the furnishings. Once it's empty and you move in with your sparse furnishings, you'll be in a better position to see and 'feel' all that. Figure out your budget and accord a generous amount for window coverings. Are the blinds staying? You might prefer something else to control the light in the space and be more in sync with your new furniture. I know it's tempting to paint everything before moving in but you risk being disappointed.

A colour consultation is a great suggestion. My suggestion is to move in and concentrate first on the bones of the place (floor, windows, trim) and the furniture layout. Colour on the walls is something you fine tune after living with the varying light in a space. Good luck and congrats on your new house! You'll be making it 'home' in no time. :)

What an exciting time!

I love this stage of life and have helped so many of my neices and nephews when they were moving into their first homes.

There are a couple of preliminary steps that you need to define before your start designing your new home.

1. Define your lifestyle - Take a good look at your daily life and figure out what type of household you will have. Rate yourself between neat freak and slob, hoarder and minamalist, lazy and high energy, entertainer and loner, indoor and outdoor, fancy and casual. Knowing how you live your life really helps you to understand your needs. Why get a goumet kitchen if you pick up McDs on the way home from work every night?

2. Define your style. Do you love heavy, ornate antique furniture or clean MCM lines? Country cottage, scandanavian, traditional, victorian, industrial? Does the style fit with your lifestyle. It will never feel right if you get prim victorian furniture and love to throw Sunday football beer bong bbqs.

3. Figure out the colors that make your heart sing. Look in your closet, at art you have purchased, vases, jewlery, makeup, haircolor. (I know the last two sound crazy, but most people are drawn to colors that look good on them. We like the color because it complements our hair and skin tones). You want to feel like a 10 inside your home and if you look sickly in olive green and paint the inside of your home with an olive green toned neutral you will not feel like the queen of your castle.

Once you have done your homework you should look at your home and figure out what must stay. Either it is something you love or something you can't afford to replace for at least 5 years.

Your going to have to work with these things and marry them to your style and colors.

Think about each room and how you envision living in that room. What energy do you want in each room? Do you need a relaxing bath every evening or a high energy bathroom that helps energize you in the morning. Do you want your bedroom to be sultry/sexy, soft/romantic or calm and relaxing?

Now think about how you travel through your home and what is seen as you walk from room to room. You want the colors you select to flow through the home. If you paint your entry a grayish teal you probably don't want high energy orange in the living room.

I like to set out a large table and place a white sheet or plastic table cloth over the table. I then set the colors that have to stay from end to end as I would encounter those colors when walking through my home. You can draw outlines for the room on the cover if it helps.

Now place the colors that you love in each room. Does the color give the right energy or feel that you are looking for in that room. Does the color work with the things that must stay. Does the color work well with the color you selected for the next room. Your not going to paint every room a different color, but if you love cornflower blue, light pinks and pale sage greens you will want to incorporate these colors into each room. Some may only have one of the three colors represented, some may be painted one of the colors and have artwork/ upholstery/accents in the othe colors.

Once you have selected the color flow it is time to select your neutral. I love purples and teals and deep reds. I have no beige or yellows in my home. I selected a taupe as my neutral. Taupe will turn pink next to anything with a yellow undertone. If you love very clean colors a muddy neutral will look dirty. If you love muted colors you won't want a crisp gray or white because your other things will look dull and old and dirty.

I usually paint the main living areas in my neutral and paint bathrooms, bedrooms and possibly the kitchen or laundry room in colors. I pull the colors into the neutral rooms with things (Art, furniture, pillows), I use subdued versions of color on walls because they are huge, so a little color goes a long way.

After I pick my neutral I will pick my white for doors and trim.

Hope this helps.

Apart from a cleaner perspective ... another reason I would paint before moving in is because there’s A LOT of holes to fill on those walls. I’m afraid that the walls will look like someone used them for target practice with their BB gun after the previous owners remove all that stuff.

Fair point. In that case, you could always prep and prime before moving in. Depends on how willing you are to live with "unfinished" walls. (I lived for months with paint samples on my kitchen walls.) Also, are you painting yourselves or hiring pros? If hiring, might be cheaper to get everything done in one fell swoop. There are pros and cons to both scenarios.

Did you have inspiration pics to guide you with colour schemes, Laura?

I would prep and prime before you move in. Then you can decide if you are going to keep the carpet. I don't think you have to spay away from grays with, by the way.

If you want to paint, Benjamin Moore White Cloud and Dove White are good choices. Use a matte finish for the walls and satin for the trim and baseboards.

On my monitor, the wall colour in your inspo pic is not that far off from the current one. The stone fireplace is quite the focal point in this pic. Can you translate that easily in your space? Btw, were you planning on keeping the TV in same spot? If you want to move it to a side wall and do any daytime tv watching, you might need a blackout solution for the windows.

Carpet?

To me, the TV makes sense in that niche. I'm not sure stone above the fireplace would give you a great bang for your buck. What type of fireplace is it? I wouldn't go with dark curtains because they will give the impression of a large dark wall and you might lose the light, bright look that was your aim. (I have dark curtains with light walls in my family room and often wish I had found a light wall/curtain match. It can be nice when curtains "disappear" in a room.)

Moving the tv makes perfect sense. I don't like it at all where it's at now. Painting before you move in is easier if you are having someone else do it. but a color you choose bwithout seeing it in the houses lighting can be totally different. Most rooms in my home are painted the same color but it's hard to believe that since the lighting in every room is different. Shadows and bright daylight