As for colors, first take your cue from your floors. Are they tiled, carpeted or wood in a warm (yellow/cream/hardwoods) or cool (grey/blue/bamboo)? And, as a note, white is a neutral and goes with warm or cool. Depending on which color range (warm/cool) and your furniture colors, confidently pick your paint colors.
For my new bathroom, kitchen, pantry/mud room and powder room, I took lino, cabinet and window/door/base trim, doors, wall/ceiling colors from the tile backsplash and shower enclosure, as that's the longest-lasting of all of the components. The tile color is "biscuit" and the cabinets and paint are as closely matched to it as the difference in sheen permits. The lino is a marbled pattern containing minor quantities of that color along with several shades of a warm taupe that the manufacturer calls "sparrow". The lino pattern and color combination, as well as the matte finish, are great for hiding dirt and smears.
The accent color in the bathroom, which is upstairs, is an herb green for its soothing effect. The accent in the remodeled downstairs rooms is clear, intense red to match the future dining room wall color, taken from the oriental rug in the living room, as there are no doors on the openings between the kitchen, dining room, and living room.
Next project (no telling when, though) will be replacing the hardwood floors throughout the rest of the house, as they're very worn and too thin to refinish. To avoid a sharp contrast, the stain will be just a bit lighter than the rather dark original bit of window, door and base trim finish that remains from former owners' attempts at "improvement". After that, I'll refinish the currently painted trim in the areas with hardwood floor and oak trim taking the color back to match the original bit. The oak trim ends at the top of the stairs, just out of sight of the front entry, replaced with paint-grade wood, which will be repainted to match the lightest bit of grain in the refinished oak trim, again to avoid an abrupt contrast.
The wall/ceiling colors in the living and dining room, as well as the upholstery fabric, will be taken from the living room rug, using its pale cream on the walls/ceiling in the north-facing living room, up the open staircase and continuing throughout the upstairs hall. Each bedroom will have its own color scheme, all from the warm end of the spectrum. A soothing green for my bedroom taken from a lamp that I use there, pale yellow for the small north-facing room that I use for sewing, taken from a print of Hopper's "Girl At a Sewing Machine" that hangs in that room. Probably a soothing green for the guest room, as well. In each room, I'll probably use a slightly darker and much glossier version of the wall color for the wood trim, as low contrast is much more restful than high contrast.
First I have to recover financially and psychologically from the 6-month remodeling that's just been completed! I'm happy with the result and relieved that I got through it without having even one melt-down.
