2014: For anyone who reads this for, I'm sure the original poster has moved on from this issue, but it helped me! The original post complained that Behr's Mountain Haze is too gray and dull. I was going to use Mountain Haze but decided to do more research. Behr has a few other pale sagey colors: Cilantro Cream, and Pale Sagebrush. I did samples of each color on the bedroom walls. I decided that Mountain Haze was less sagey than I wanted. Cilantro Cream is in a coordinated palette with Ultra Pure White, so I decided to use this for walls and trim. Pale Sagebrush is pretty too, if you want just a little less yellow. Always remember - the color may look different on your walls, in your room, depending on lighting and flooring and other items and colors in the room. Ultimately I needed a slightly stronger color to carry the dark furniture in the room and Cilantro Cream fit the bill.

Hi - We just painted our entire first floor in Farrow & Ball "old white", which is a taupe-y grey. In some light, it also has a very slight hint of sagey green, but not so much that you'd think it's a green color. It definitely looks more taupe-y than anything else, and we've gotten lots of "oohs and aaahs" over it, even from the subs. We have dark wood floors and white trim and baseboards (which is done in F&B "Pointing" as are our ceilings). In the office and master bedroom, we used F&B "light grey", which is also a wonderful color but definitely darker and may not feel light enough for the main areas in your home, depending on what your natural light is like (and obviously, depending on your taste for dark vs. light). Farrow & Ball has such wonderful big hand-painted swatch cards, and I would highly recommend purchasing them...they're a hefty $50, but definitely worth it and WAY better than the little brochure they'll send you for free, which has tiny little bits of color that give you just enough of a feel to want to see more! If you're interested, I can take photos of these rooms, but we're moving in on Friday (after an 8-month whole house renovation), and we're in the throes of last-minute chaos with electricians hanging fixtures, painters doing touch-ups and punch list stuff. Our contractor put rosin paper down on the floors so they won't get messed up, and so the tone of the red rosin paper may influence what you'll see as the color of the walls. Here's a tip for you - if you go to Google and press the tab for "Images" and type in the name of the paint that you're considering using, you'll probably see photos of rooms from magazines that used that color. It's very helpful. When we were considering using F&B's "Middleton Pink" for my teenage daughter's room, we were worried that it would be too little girl-ish, but when she saw the image of several rooms painted in Middleton Pink, she liked it and so we went with it (unfortunately, later on, after it was on the walls, I made the mistake of mentioning that it wasn't a very sophisticated color. DUH! WRONG thing to say to a teenager). Anyway, Google Images was very helpful! Good luck with your search. I went through the identical struggle on the neutral grey taupe about six months ago so I know how difficult it can be! Susan

Favorite go-to exterior color plan is to pull the color from the mortar for the body of the house - or as close to matching the mortar color as you can get. It's neutral and guaranteed to work with what you've got. For the trim, tell your painter/paint mixer person that you want the same mortar-inspired body color **BUT** several shades lighter or darker - your choice. I'd probably go lighter. It's simple, I know, but it's easy for anybody to execute and you end up with curb appeal that's tasteful, cohesive and pulled together.

If you have a lot of bright white furniture, as in your second pic, the cream trim might look "dingy" next to it. Or it might be a question of a warm trim with cool walls. Difficult to see an issue with these pics. As for the ceilings, some people think they should always be 'ceiling white' because that reflects light well. Are yours the same colour as your walls? Can't tell from these pics. Proper lighting in a space can also help counter "dark and dingy". Often less expensive and easier than repainting. If your large (new?) space doesn't feel cohesive to your eye, my suggestion would be to get an onsite colour consultation from a designer or colour consultant (I know Benjamin Moore offers this service). They'll see your space in natural light (not all computer screens convey colours accurately) with all your furnishings. That's another thing to keep in mind: your furnishings inform your wall colour. Paint comes in multitude of shades so it's often best to choose that element last in a room design. Gorgeous floors, btw.