DECORATING ADVICE : White Trim Offsets Peach Walls

Question: I need to paint my living and dining rooms. I have nine-foot ceilings, and there is a wooden molding around each wall.

The carpet is beige, and the sofa is covered in a rust, brown, olive-green and peach floral print with a beige background. The two chairs are covered in a rust, olive green, beige and brown striped fabric. I can’t replace any furniture or carpet. Should I paint the walls and ceilings one color? Or should I use a two-tone or a three-tone?

MRS. LEONARD, SONDERGARD

Answer: Paint all of the walls deep peach. Try a lighter hue of peach for the sofa. Cover the wood molding with a bright white semi-gloss enamel. If budget permits, liven up your room with some peacock-blue satin throw cushions on the sofa. Trim the cushions in a peach and deep-peach fringe.

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Q: After retiring, we moved into a mobile home. We need help decorating our bedroom. The walls are paneled in a very light beige pressed wood with vertical grooves, which makes papering difficult. The new carpeting has six-inch squares in alternating patterns. The colors are dark brown, beige and rust-orange. The 150-year-old mahogany beds have rounded foot boards and posts, so we cannot use comforters.

We need window coverings, bed coverings and some idea of how to give pizazz to this room, which is absolutely blah!

I’m a 74-year-old great-grandmother with young ideas, and I love colors!

VIRGINIA DUPREZ

A: Your bedroom does indeed need picking up. Find a happy flowery chintz with shades of orange, green, red, pink and aquas on a bright jonquil-yellow background. Use the print at your windows, under valances of jonquil yellow, lined in tangerine. For your bed, find some yellow and white wide-stripe sheets. Combine the sheets with some soft tangerine pillowcases, bordered in white. For lampshades on the bedside lamps, use the chintz that matches your window drapery. Your room will come alive.

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Q: Give me some finishing touches approaches, please.

BETTY HOLDEN

A: Wallpaper and upholstery are important, but the finishing touches are what really make a room special. With that in mind, consider these final flourishes:

* Chandelier sleeves. Back when the Louis kings were enhancing their palaces, decorators covered chandelier chains with fabric. Chandelier-chain covers are called sleeves today. For many years, my drapery workrooms have been making sleeves with easy-to-use Velcro attachments.

If you have a chandelier with an unattractive brass chain hanging in your dining room, why not cover it with a bright velvet, silk or a damask? It will add some punch and fun to your decorating scheme. Chandelier sleeves even come prepackaged in the drapery departments of most department stores. The covers come in all colors and are relatively inexpensive.

* Decorative pillows. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they can add a special accent to your club chairs, sofa, even to the seats of your dining chairs. I’ve seen Japanese-style pillows that look like small bed rolls; they come carefully tied with silk cording. I’ve seen big throw cushions made from Spanish tapestry. The beautiful fringed pillows make perfect floor seats.

* Occasional rugs. A very simple, colorful rug on the floor at bedside can become the magic carpet, as can that Appalachian woven cotton rug under the coffee table in the family room. Small accent rugs are available in the Oriental style, in the cotton style, in the dhurrie style and in the Berber style. These small rugs are easy to find; chances are your local mall has them!

* Colorful picture mats. Say you are framing a series of antique botanicals. Why mat them in beige linen when you can mat them in bright red, lilac or some other dashing color? A bright picture mat is a quick color-fix and the answer to the wall “blahs.”