Hi Sophia, I think a dark grey with a hint of mauve would look spectacular and keep the whole home looking cool. What's more, when your garden and trees grow, the greens will complement the colour. Then a touch of red in plantings of kangaroo paw, bottle brush or hibiscus or even a flame tree would make the neighbours applaud your colour choices for sure. Check out Dulux's Colour Wall palette under Greys for tones like Yarwood, Otto's Boy and Babbler http://www.dulux.com.au/colour/colour-wall

After great thought with the advice given & other researched sites, we have decided to not render our bricks. :) We have begun re painting our pergola from dulux lexicon to taubmans coffee cake - very similar to our window trims. It's a neutral stone/beige colour. We hope to paint our garage doors & gutters monument & probably the facia trims in coffee cake. Fingers crossed for it to look ok. Thanks again.

I'm personally not a fan of tile - very hard on the feet, I find - so I'd probably restrict tile to the wet areas and go for hardwood everywhere else. Our last home had wood in every room except the bathroom, and after 10 years it still looked fine. Even the kitchen looked good. That said, we didn't have kids running around in the house. Did (and still do) have a dog, though. Our current house has carpeting in the bedrooms, engineered wood in the living areas, and tile in the bathrooms and laundry. All three floor coverings have a similar greigish tone, so to my mind they look fine together, and meet the practicality and comfort criteria as well.

With a million variations through a million computer screens you will get a million suggestions and very confused while no closer to your answer. You have to do the work yourself and either get a colour match to a chip the min of a 50c piece or buy a Dulux or Taubmans fan deck and select a colour as close as you can. Alternately get a professional painter or decorator to use their fan deck or atlas to colour match for you and be prepared to pay them for their time.