Hi Maria, we love the wood but it is a little overwhelming in that space with the timber floor. A liming white is a great idea as mentioned by a few people here. This will let you have the best of both worlds, a lighter, brighter finish while still allowing the wood grain to show through. You could try Feast Watson Liming White Floor Finish (yes, it's not a floor but it has the size of a floor!) and build up the number of coats until you are happy with the amount of timber grain showing through. You'll probably need to give it a light sand first as it's most likely already got some type of coating on it. The other option would be to leave the walls as is and consider a large, light neutral coloured rug as pompom suggested on the timber floor and perhaps a good sized piece of art on the wall or white wall shelving instead of the dark side unit you have to reduce the amount of timber in the room.

I had the same problem too. I rang Dulux and had a paint consultant come in. I have chosen the white exchange full strength throughout the double story house as we have a lot of natural light with vivd white ceilings and WA white doors and trims. The bedrooms I have 1/2 strength white exchange with vivd white ceilings. I wanted my white kitchen to pop with the wall paint colour. Our kitchen cupboards are polar silk white with moose silk contrasting and ice snow bench tops. Hopefully it all blends with the spotted gum floorboards. We have not installed the kitchen yet. I hope it all comes together. Good luck.

Okay, firstly, this is very difficult to do without seeing the room in person. So rather than suggesting a colour, let me tell you some theory and hopefully you can work it out. The painting looks a little yellow on my screen, I think it would look different in person. You want the image to stand out. What you're looking for is contrast between the image and your surroundings. Contrast can give seperation between elements and that's what you're after, the wall to receed behind the painting. white is not cutting it because it's competing with the image. The image has some light bright tones ie it's bright and the white wall will be bright, so a while wall and the painting will both compete for your attention. the other problem you have is all of the other elements in the room are darker and warm timber, we notice warm colours before cooler colours (ie blues) first, so it's likely all of thu sis competing against each other. So to not compete with everything else, you want something cooler but also not saturated (without a lot of colour). You want people to forget about the wall. again it's very difficult without seeing the room, so any colour I give you is not going to work. Get a few swatches from Bunnings and take them home and hold them next to the picture in the room. Narrow it down the 3 paints then get a small canvas, Bunnings is cheap, paint that with your colours and rest them on the wall with the painting. Move the canvas around the wall. Good luck. Colour is difficult but just try and get something that doesn't compete with the painting.

As I said before keeping clutter under control is the key, get lots of storage ,you said cost is I s an issue. Look at IKEA they have solutions for wall units that you can get in different colours and that in itself will brighten the place. You would benefit from a buffet next to the kitchen /dining area or a large wall unit with lots of shelfs and drawers, coffee table with storage drawers , storage unit with baskets for kids toys and school stuff, once you have this under control start adding rugs if think you still need it. By the look of it you have small kids get them to put things in appropriate place and get some funky coat hangers in the entrance so they can hang hats and bags etc.