Your home is lovely, my thoughts are if you are hesitating about the dado rails, maybe consider turning them into an elegant and timeless feature, by converting them to wainscoting? (I sense from your question that you are not a devotee of the Victorian style :-) I also agree with what the others have mentioned about changing the colours to something more neatural like a shade of grey that you like or a dusty blue, and leaving the lower half white. For a more updated look, you could look at updating the pendant lights to something a little more classic, (to your taste of course) and if budget permits, changing to carpets to perhaps a hardwood floor. All the best, I hope this helped. Ive attached a picture and link to an example. http://www.charmingzebra.com/2011/07/wainscoting-success-sort-of.html

Thank-you all so much for your advice so far, i've already gained so many ideas simply from reading your suggestions. oskuee: The house is a single story, and we have spoken about solar tubes before but weren't too sure how to incorporate lighting fixtures within the hallway as well. How did you go about it? Did you just install the 2 solar tubes with/without lighting fixtures? scottevie: the windows in the lounge will be remaining the same, we will eventually change the colour of the curtains but not straight away, either way the styling and shape will remain the same. Surprisingly there isn't a whole lot of natural light than can enter from that point of the house. There is a very large verandah at the front of the house which this window backs on to, plus the amount of trees from the front of our property and next door's front yard makes it difficult for natural light to seap through. I just had a quick look at some Dulux White Duck examples, i definitely favour something around this colour tone. telperien: i really like the ideas of mirror(s), this would be a great idea to distribute that natural light. I think we are going to try our best to steer clear of knocking down any walls for now unless we really need to! Embrace interiors: Thank-you so much for the recommendations in paint colour and for re-assuring us that we can paint below the dado rail in a darker colour. We've had a closer look and Stone Lion is definitely the tone we are trying to achieve. If we were to paint the bottom half in Stone Lion, what would you recommend the colour of the picture frames for the artwork be on the top half? We definitely would consider painting the top half in a warmer white as you have recommended. Once again, thank-you all for your suggestions and recommendations!!

A bit hard to know what to say here if it's only the fence colour you are wanting opinions on. I would definately go for black or dark charcoal for the fence, but I agree that it may not work with the house. The problem is the cream colour is very outdated. If you put a cream fence it will work better with the house as it is now, but then you are stuck with an outdated colour scheme. If it was me I would probably do a dark charcoal fence, and then slowly work on updating the colour scheme of the actual house - for example, the same charcoal for the garage doors, posts, colourbond fence, shed etc. But it would come down to budget, I guess.

opposite the railings I painted my desk top BM "Night Horizon" - similar to framesEverything was/ is golden oakI was thinking I need to draw the eye around the corner via railings to the kitchen. I like to change accessories -lime green, cobalt blue, red and thus I was considering a neutral palette as accent wall but last night as I lie dreaming, I thought maybe I should just do a blue wall and go blue through that whole floor-the trouble with open concept Easy to change up accents