GREIGE IS THE NEW BEIGE, I HEAR

What we've got here: The tweedy fabric on the bottom is our new sectional sofa. I LOVE this fabric! The lighter two pillows in the middle are of a fabric I selected in the furniture store to go on the couch pillows. The pillows were free with the sofa. The pillow in the center is the same as that on the room's "statement" chair.

So here's my decorating storyboard. Only, it's not a storyboard but the real deal. We've done over our family/living room within the past few years. The TV cabinet is the same golden-oak hue that matches the staircase, and there are some antiques and modern end tables in the room, but everything you can sit on is new or almost so.

Who can do everything at once? We can't --or don't choose to, anyway. The decisions are too overwhelming to make at one time. Each purchase requires the appropriate amount of fretting and revisiting and then feeling like you're going to throw up because you maybe made the wrong choice. (That's how I roll with redecorating! Yikes!)

Selecting carpeting is the hardest, followed closely by paint. We got new carpeting approaching four years ago. I wanted the slightly shaggy multi-hued browns-and-beige stuff. Brian didn't like that idea, thinking it would resemble our previous carpeting too much. It was a berber, though, and I thought of it as a cobblestone street. It was time to move on.

For sure he wanted brown. His reasoning? "Isn't all carpet brown?"

Well, no, it's not, but it seemed a good base color. I guess we can't help it. We're drawn to neutrals, and for us, we go to beiges and browns.

Here's a look at almost three-fourths of the living/family room. It's odd that the walls have a light greenish tint here because they don't in real life. I don't think they do anyway! The oak coffee table will stay as is. The boys love that table. It's very sentimental to them. The small reupholstered chair belonged to Brian's folks and we just had it recovered.

It hasn't always been that way. We began housekeeping 41 years ago with the purchase of a brand new house trailer. Carpeting was orange, kitchen wallboard was an orange and yellow print. Our Tupperware was orange. Hey, it was the '70s, people! If you didn't do that combo, it was avacado.

I dreamed of a blue kitchen and soon started collecting a popular line of dishes at the time in a light gray with blue motif. In fact, our houses for the next two decades were largely adorned in blue.

When we moved here, I was ready for some new color and I found it in our green and white ivy-wallpapered kitchen. I loved that room the most in this house. I never thought I'd get such beautiful cabinets -- honey oak. They matched my Seller's Cabinet. Walking into the south-facing room felt like entering a garden.

​I never dreamed the day would come where people were painting over honey oak! But that's what they do, but I can't bring myself to do it. 

The ivy is gone, and we have a wall color and tile in the kitchen now that is something like "Buckwheat" or some other appealing kind of name, even though I have no idea what real buckwheat looks like.

So now that we have a two-year-old (already!) statement chair in a very busy pattern that I fell in love with, and a second statement chair which is an old family chair handed down that we had recovered this spring in a triangle of cream, brown, beige and gray. We have an ultra comfy new sectional sofa in a soft beige and brown tweed, a faux-leather recliner for Brian and a beige recliner for me.

Well, we looked up and saw that there are some blackish streaks descending from the never-painted-by-us vaulted ceiling. We haven't painted this room in 14 years. FOURTEEN. I emphasize the number only because should we make it into the future that far, I will be pushing 75 and Brian already 80! 

But I digress.

SO, here's the question for my dear reader friends, I KNOW a good many of you are very adept at decorating and I am friend-sourcing here. WHAT color would you paint our walls? Brian says, "We could do the same color."

I nominated white. I like white walls. And I've seen some magazine decor that indicates others do too. It's clean, it brightens everything. Brian said no.

Then I discovered on Pinterest that there's a buzz about a new palette (or new to me) called Greige. It's when your color isn't readily identifiable as either a gray or a beige. My dilemma is I want something new and in style in color. But a large sweep of color scares me. It's very expensive to have this large expansive room, halls and while we're at it, the master painted. I want to get it right. 

So what do you think. You see the room and the furniture and the carpeting and all those things have to stay. Do you have a greige in your home? Or should I go with a cream, or what? 

Weigh in please! 

I do want to keep the white baseboards. But what color should we paint the walls?