Hi helendyjak, New colour for 2017? Trends are interesting. I encourage clients to chose colours they love and then I specify a range of those colours to match their space. Trends are great but if you follow trends when painting spaces they will also date quickly and in architecture that can become very costly and wasteful. Now having said that; trends - to answer your question... spaces are filling up with teal (more last year) and shades of green with links back to art deco. Your comments on colour making space smaller are interesting. Did you experience that? I like to get people to start using colour in small transitional spaces so they experiences how it makes a space feel more intimate and makes all the items in that space "pop". It might make the space feel smaller (this is very subjective as bold colour tends to be) the room is still physically the same size but it might have more personality with the bold colour (again subjective.... :) Thanks for the input. Much appreciated.

some photos would explain the dilemma

I agree with Jan -- a lot is personal , and your lifestyles . You say neutral colours , so a wheat type colour for the carpet is a good middle of the road choice , but maybe not practical with kids who like crayons and facepainting and stripping down motorbikes haha . So in that case , maybe a burgundy or mid blue or similar 'solid' colour may suit better ( burgundy may tie in more with the exterior tones ) , but is still sort of neutral , but what about furniture and linen and artwork -- if you have royal blue or fluro green drawers and a brown chair and sunshine yellow duvet/dooner cover , and the room is for someone older than 4 , then burgundy carpet mightn't be the go haha . The existing wall colour works with most things , you can add artwork or posters or sports or academic certificates -- maybe back to front , but I'd sort out everything else ( carpet , furniture , etc ) before deciding on a wall colour , unless sticking to the existing or similar colour .

Hi, I agree and that it should be the ceiling colour but you could do a lighter shade of your wall colour for your ceiling colour (including the bulkheads) instead of ceiling white. Use Snowy Mountains Quarter. You will have a lot of shadows and less light on the ceiling, especially with the bulkheads, so a slightly lighter colour will help with that. Nice choice with wall colour btw. Rebecca