Yes, to cornicing and a picture rail. I've also put up a ceiling rose. I was planning to paint the ceiling, ceiling rose and down to the picture rail white - and do the same in all the bedrooms and public rooms. You've got me thinking now about matching the ceiling colour to the wall colour... ;-)

Most Fired Earth paint colours are available in masonry paint, it's expensive (compared to standard masonry paint) but goes on a dream, with great coverage. Gives you a great choice of colours, we went with Stone Ocre, although on a more modern house, it looks much nicer than white or magnolia (IMHO).

Sal, Your kitchen looks beautiful! Its such a pain having to choose colours but I guess its definately worth it at the end. Going to order some test pots today and try as suggested. I like the feel mellow mocha gave to your kitchen - bounces back light and the contrast on the other side of the wall - the copper blush! Looking at doing something similar but want whatever colour I choose to flow through our lounge (its open plan) without 'breaking' the feel- if you get what I mean! Thanks, will defo post pics once done.

The last time I needed to do the "swatches on a wall" thing it was in a room that had been painted a bright daffodil yellow. I had my doubts anything less than three coats would work, but nonetheless, this is what I did: first, we mapped out a section on the largest blank wall and painted it with a no-bleed primer, so as to have as neutral a background as possible. Then - as we had narrowed our selection down to three shades - we painted each shade in a column as long as we could fit in the space, with the white primer sectioned between each column. After a few days, we both agreed that one color worked better than the other two - and that's when we ordered the paint. It was the most successful change-a-color project we ever did. It's somewhat fiddly, and getting the three small sample cans plus the primer wasn't cheap (but not terribly expensive, either), but I feel we were well repaid by not painting the entire room only to find the color we ended up with didn't work. I've never been able to visualize color from the small samples or cards you get at the paint store, and I wouldn't be able to envision a whole wall, let alone a room, from a 12"x12" square. The larger samples we painted, though, did the trick for me. p.s. And painting over our test swatches was no problem. We knew we'd have to use two coats on the walls to get rid of the yellow so no tinge remained, and using two coats covered our sample columns as well as the primer beneath - you cannot tell we ever tried the samples before we painted. ;-)