What color is your family room furniture? Or your drapes? If you're starting from scratch for your family room, the easy way is to pick an inspiration piece. That could be a plate, or some fabric, or a painting that you love the colors. Then take all your colors from that. If you go to our gallery and look through the Living Rooms thread, it contains family rooms too. You will get a lot of inspiration there. You can pick out your favorites and copy the color schemes. There is also an entry and hallway thread that shows some halls. You may also find ideas in the Home Offices thread. Once you have an idea of the color you want on the walls, see the gallery color threads to get your ideas narrowed down. You can do a search in the gallery on a color name.

We had darker paneling in our dining room, painting it a lighter yellow color brightened it up.

I would not want wood in my entry, but we have severe winters, so we drag a lot of snow in with us for much of the year. I would also worry about scratching a wood entry floor, since we don't take our shoes off until we get indoors. Wood everywhere else, though.

I've used the same palette in my home for many years. Greeny blues,blue-y greens,turquoise,teal,peacock,pink,blush,ochre,butterscotch,cream. The amounts of each shade varies and so does the execution. (these days evermore pattern is creeping in) I blame Richard Diebenkorn.