Hi design mavens - we just bought a "mountain contemporary" home with soaring, exposed beam ceilings, and a 30' window wall. It's a beautiful house and we are so happy to finally be here, but the late 90's interior has posed some design challenges. 90's tile, St Cecilia granite counters, knotty fir trim floor to ceiling, "greige" walls with knock-down texture, and brown - everything. Our style WAS eclectic modern (our former city bungalow was white stucco, and filled with color and pattern). We plan to update the kitchens and baths to something in between.

The wood floors are beautiful hickory, so we're thinking if we square off, smooth and paint the trim white, that will help neutralize the rustic and give us a baseline palette to start designing on top of. But the trouble comes in the transition to the windows, and the wall color. Here's where I'm STUCK and could really use some advice...

1. My husband wants to paint his office a deep green, but I think it will be too abrupt a style change if only that one room is painted a deep color and everything else is greige. Unless, we go with a darker interior color throughout. Normally, I'd keep walls white and use color in textiles and art, but this is the first house I've owned that can actually handle a darker interior color - it's flooded with light and has high ceilings everywhere. Also the knock-down texture is dated. I don't think we can afford to skim coat 3000 sf of wall, so I feel we're stuck with it. I can't help but wonder if painting the walls a dark gray would modernize things. (just exploring). BUT, the walls don't end in right angles to the ceiling, and the ceiling lines are all over the place. Painting walls would also mean painting the ceilings the same color because there's no clear ends or beginnings in many of the rooms, especially his office, where the ceiling flows into a wall in the loft above.

3. And how to handle all the window casings in either situation (white walls or gray walls)? If we paint the interior trim white, we don't want to also paint the interior wood window casings, which would just be a nightmare. Will that look odd?

4. If we explored a dark interior wall color, that would mean painting the interior trim a dark color, yes? Same problem as above. My instinct is that we should keep the walls white, and not use color in any of the rooms (sad?). But still stuck with the window casing dilemma.

Advice would be much appreciated!!