To paint or not to paint

I love to rearrange furniture. Lord knows I have tried to rearrange our living room furniture a million times, but it only fits one way. Same with every other room in our house except our family room. I am forever moving that stuff around. And now that the gigantic glass box of sea sludge (otherwise known as the 75 gallon fish tank) is gone I have even more room. Ok, not exactly. I turned the tank stand into a buffet to hold all of my glass wear and china. We have also said good bye to the smaller and just as nasty tank! I think I now have the furniture just the way I like it, but am still in a bit of a pickle.

Our family room is on the north side of our house. The only natural light it gets is from the sliding glass door. Needless to say it is a little dark in the winter. CS and I picked all the interior colors for our house before we moved in. Our whole home looked like 1984 threw up in it when we moved in. We ripped out carpet, scrubbed off ugly wall paper, refinished hardwoods, and painted nearly every surface. It finally has caught up to the 21st century. But there is this one nagging spot of unsureity (I know that is not a word.) Our family room. Our family room rocks! It has maple parquet floors, a sueded cotton sofa, a great IKEA poang chair and the wood furniture is a dark black brown. I painted an 8?x4? Frank Lloyd Wright style mural on the wall and the rest of the walls are called “Mayan Treasure.” (AKA coleman?s mustard yellow) It is this dark yellow that gets me. Don?t get me wrong I think it is a great color, but it is a little dark. Especially for a north room. We have added so many lights to this room you could see it from space, but the room still feels dark.

This is the boy?s primary play room, but is still our family room. I am very partial to my mural and the remainder of the artwork in the room. Most of the artwork in our house is either my photos or vintage posters. I want to repaint this room, but save the mural and the artwork. The question becomes, what color? The furniture is neutral so that doesn?t matter too much. I won?t paint it blue because our kitchen, my office and the boy?s bedroom are blue and we are getting ready to paint our bedroom blue. Our dining room, living room and hall are olive green-grey and one bathroom is spring green. The other bathroom is white with one red wall.

So give me some suggestions. I need to brighten this room up. It is starting to depress me.