Question:

Hi Steven & Chris,
My wife and I have lived in our Arts & Crafts style home for ten years. It is a 90 year old home with a ton of character and beautiful woodwork. We are wanting to brighten up our family room and adjoining library but are unsure if painting out the woodwork is necessary to achieve this.

Thanks,
Mark

Tips:

• We are big fans of Arts & Crafts houses like yours - they just don't make them like this anymore!

• Your space is reading "dark" because you have only dark things - beams, floor, leather furniture, and minimal artificial light. You can bring lightness and brightness to the space without compromising the original character of the house and in particular, the woodwork.
• The first thing to do is to paint - not the wood work, but rather the walls. The caramel color that you have right now is blending everything together too much. Opt for a warm white to achieve the freshness but maintain the warmth.
  

Image courtesy of Traditional Home.

• We see that your wood floors are two very different colours. We would like to see you match the light wood to the rest of the dark wood floors, ultimately matching the rest of the woodwork. You have incredible baseboards and it will look amazing if everything is seamlessly integrated together.
  

For Furniture, you have two options:

1. Start fresh - the leather is contributing to the dark look that you don't seem to like. We would love to see you start fresh with some clean, white seating. Simple lines will allow the focus of the room to be the gorgeous woodwork.


Image courtesy of Traditional Home.

Quick fix - if you are married to the leather, we would like to see you bring in a light coffee table, light side tables and bright accessories. We need to balance out the dark with some crisp whites and soft creams.

In lighting, we would like to see you update the fixtures in this space. This should be pretty easy because you already have all of the junction boxes in the ceiling with your existing fixtures.

• RECESSED: We recommend some recessed lighting for overall illumination.
• TABLE LAMPS: Try a lovely crystal or white base in a large scale with a great oversized white drum shade. This will give you so much more light to really show off the space.
  

We would like you to pull your loveseat forward so that the front of it is on the rug. This will give more circulation in the space as well as anchoring the seating area centered around the television.