I also suggest that you build a whole home color pallet. You want each room to complement the rooms next to them so that you keep a great cohesive feel to your home. I recently bought a home and used the same method that I used on my last home and on a dozen homes belonging to friends and family. Get a large white sheet and lay it over a table either outside or near large windows. You want to see the colors in natural daylight to really get a feel for the undertones. Gather samples of the colors that are in your home and have to stay. Flooring, counters, appliances, might even be a painting that is special to you and you will never part with or new furniture that you are going to keep for a long time. Place the colors on the sheet in the same pattern that you would see if you were walking from room to room in your home. Then pick the colors that you love - those colors from your closet and accessories and art work that you selected that make your heart sing. (You don't want to envelop yourself in a color you would never wear - you want your home to make you feel like a 10). You will want most of the colors to be subdued versions of the colors you love - I have dark hair and eyes and ivory skin. Summer colors. I love purple, but instead of bright purple walls, I selected smoky purples complemented them with deep wine red and grayish teal. My sister have medium brown hair and more olive toned skin. Her home has all fall colors - gray greens, oranges, tans, reds. My sister in law has blond hair and blue eyes and has a country home with soft yellows, peach and cornflower blues. Place the colors in different rooms on your sheet, figuring out what works with the colors that must stay and how the colors can flow from room to room. Think about how each room is going to be used and what feelings you want the room to reflect (You may want to feel sexy in the bedroom, but comfortable in the living room or you may want to feel relaxed in the bedroom and have your living room a bright and cheery gathering space) Pick out 3 to 6 colors that you want to incorporate into your home. Now pick out the neutral that is going to work with the colors that must stay and the colors that you love. The rule of thumb is that you should have 60% neutral, 30% subdued color and 10% accept color. My last home the ceilings were all my neutral (Purple under toned taupe) as were my living room, entry, hallways and office. My kitchen was deep wine red - made the cabinets pop. I continued the wine red into the family room as it was a single wall in an open concept space. I used a deeper shade of my neutral on the other 2 walls in that room. My 2 spare bedrooms were a light grayish teal and the bathrooms a deep grayish teal. My towels were smokey purple as were the walls in my master bedroom. My carpet in the bedroom was a deep shade of my neutral. Don't be afraid of color, use what you already know. What would you wear together. If your ever unsure if something works together, remember that mother nature is the best color coordinator around. If she put colors together they work. Look at landscapes, flowers, streams, beaches and pick the colors that mother nature put together and you will never go wrong.

Another vote to leave the cabinets alone, please! (and the fireplace and floor though you didn’t ask) The furniture that’s there - the wing chair, its fussy side thing, the sofa, rust-colored floor cushions, the rug — those are what are making the room look dated. If you want to lighten/modernize the room as you said, replace those things. That room is a candidate for West Elm and dwr if I ever saw one. Remove the ceiling fan too.

I just realized I did not come back and update what I decided to do. I so appreciate everyone's commnets and suggestions. I did have them painted white and love the result! it feels like such a tranquil room now. I don't know if it is just an itch to have something different, but now I am trying to decide if I want to have the kitchen cabinets painted white since to rooms are open to each other. I am not concerned about following trends. The cabinets are either maple or birch. As I have polled my friends and family I get differing answers. I am not good at visualizing and have tried the paint visualizers from SW and BJ but it looked like a kindergartener scribbled on the picture with a crayon! I did try homedesign.ai and no matter how many times I ask for white cabinets, it always produced this picture: I actually really like this look, but it also has new countertops and backsplash. I just wasn't ready to do a whole kitchen remodel.

Unless you are attempting to restrict a movable underlayment for hardscaping (sand or crusher course), you never need edging. It is only a personal choice. The right type of edging can help with the ability to mow well and close to the bedline but flimsy wooden pickets are not it!! Just a clean, sharp edge between lawn and soil is all that is required and that can be done with a good, sharp edged garden tool. As to the width of the bed, 30" is undersized for virtually all shrubs and many perennials.....36" is scarcely better. You want sufficient bed depth (from foundation to lawn) to accommodate the mature spread of the plant in question without encountering the structure plus room to access behind for maintenance needs. And most folks do not favor a narrow row of shrub soldiers lined out but would prefer a layered look of a mixture of plants of different sizes. And that requires more depth than a skimpy 30". There is also the aesthetic question of the depth of the foundation beds being in scale with the structure, so they should have a depth equal to at least 1/3 the height of the structure. 5-6' at a minimum but deeper is better.