I have been watching these "Home Improvement" shows for years trying to garner ideas of what I want to do for my own home when I build.

I have come to the conclusion that shock value homes may be lovely, but those things are more "faddish" than long-lived.

What sort of decor colors would lead to a sort of soothing, crisp look... without looking washed out (I am tired of white walls).

I am not doing anything with our rented place, to me that is lost effort.. waste of time and money....

but when we build, what is a good idea for ongoing appeal? I don't mean generic, hotel appearances either....

go with colours that you have liked for a long time.
chances are you will like them for a long time to come.

also, if buying new furnature, get something that you can make slip covers for very easily.
that way, if you want to change the look, you just whip up a slip cover in the style/colour/pattern you want, and voila! instant room make over.

plants are also a good way to decorate, and never get dated.
you can change the pots they are in to match whatever you decorate for.

oh, and one more thing.
hard wood flooring is a very good idea.
hard wood never goes completly out of date, and you can use throw rugs for added decorating.

DONT use white or beige carpet... it stains very very easily, and wont be white in a couple of years.

One absolute in my opinion is that wall paper is always a mistake.

There is a simple truth about wall paper... you will come to hate it and it will be a pain in the butt to get rid of.

Sponge painting is the second worst mistake. Argh.... I hate it and so will most people after a few months. It doesn't even look good.

And please don't get me started on how horrible crackle finishes are... impossible to get rid of.

Finally... there is no way to make a mistake with a shower curtain except that you didn't get the one that you really liked. Go nuts and pick the goofiest shower curtain you find. 17$ is just the perfect amount to pay for something that you hate a month from now.

I am a huge fan of "real" floors...wood, tile, sealed stone if the budget allows (except in the bath and kitchen, where I like wood or vinyl)....easier to clean, fewer allergy troubles and suitable to any decor....walls, I feel, should be pale colours for the most part with more dramatic accent colours...blues, peaches, vanilla and sand are soothing and pretty easy to decorate...I mean they do not dominate too much.
There are some great computer programs available to let you decorate a virtual room to get a better idea of how a colour will look....or find colours in your paint program that you like and print a big block of it to hang on a wall... be sure to view it at different times of the day...some shades look very different in sunlight vs artificial light.

Sherasi, I think you're smart to avoid faddish paints. They need expensive pre-finishing or those dramatic colors don't go on true, and they are the very dickens to paint over when you tire of them.

If you pick a swatch of a favorite fabric for each room, as Mattylinda said, you can find one color element in it that will suggest to you a background color which will look good. There are wonderful whites - pearly whites, faintly blue whites, creamy whites, and so on for each neutral tone, such as beiges and soft greys, each has a dominant tone, and when you find the one that 'goes with' a color in your fabric, you have the basis for a very pleasing combination.

P.S. Have you seen those shows in which a family member surprises another with a complete make-over? I hate to tell you what I would do to anyone who turned my house into a set from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom without checking with me first.

Bab, I just saw one where these 2 couples did the "Trading Spaces" thing.... Coral in one room, bright Turquiose in the other..

LIKE barf!!!!!!!

Sher, in one show the decorator trimmed the KITCHEN all over with twigs and raffia and big ugly boquets of artificial flowers attached to walls and light fixtures and here and there with A GLUE GUN! It looked as tacky as one of those cheap little taverns 'done' in phony Hawaiian.

But what was worse - can you imagine trying to keep a place like that clean? Whatever happened to form-follows-function? I guess that decorator never spent any time in an actual kitchen, doing - well, cooking and washing up!

I am so glad I am not the only person who thinks these decorators are all escaped from the same institution ... one pasted grass all over an entire wall. REal grass. Can you imagine the bug problem, not to say the getting it off the wall. My lawyer would have been my first call.... where do these people come from.