my style is relaxed georgian/ english country manor/williamsburg. very 1700-1820. i like jewel colors for paint colors. i like to buy "used" "salvation army traditional"-- for a shabby gentile look , like upper class homes in England. you can put your feet on the furniture and i don't flip out.
here is an old story i have told a few times.
i was lucky to spend the day in an english noble lord (hereditary lord) and lady's home when i lived there for halliburton. the lord of the manor worked for halliburton as an engineer and so invited my ex and I to a day at their home and lunch. this is where i learned to relax in the "matchy matchy everything has to be new" american thing that we do.
the home originally was a medieval timberframe - as you entered to the right, there was a BIG, huge, saggy, off center, classic medieval hall with the little rooms (buttery, bedroom, etc) off the end. Imagine the fire in the middle of the hall floor. Imagine a lady in a warm woolen houpeland and hennin hat telling her servants instructions for the day. Imagine everyone asleep in the hall. this room was used as a library.
then got added tudor/elizabethan addition with linen fold wooden paneling, flagstone floor, enormous fireplace, and the stairs which went up, which was presently the entry hall area. Then was a georgian addition to the rear, which was technically and for photographic purposes the front of the house. there was an upstairs to the georgian addition. It was long and one room led into the other, in the late baroque/early georgian style. To the left, a modern 1960 era addition with a real kitchen, heat, and plumbing trailing off the end.
all the plumbing was in that end of the house so if you wanted a toilet, radiator heat, or a shower you had to put on a robe and go to that end of the house. I'm sure there was heat elsewhere, i just didn't see it. in england there are these fancy white painted radiator covers you can get that look like furniture.
we weren't allowed upstairs. both the lord and lady worked for a living and i don't think they had time to clean up the upstairs. it was also private space. it wasn't that big, big enough for a normal (upper class) family. I am sure the former servants lived somewhere in the home.
i can't begin to imagine what the taxes were on that place or trying to comply with english heritage. there were miles of land associated with the estate and I'm sure that brought in an income.
what i learned was that everything doesn't have to match. that rich people use washable slipcovers in chintz and damask, and keep furniture for generations. it was interesting that 1960s furniture was in the medieval hall, that modern, jacobean, georgian, victorian and medieval furniture existed comfortably in the same room. It was ok that the paint was peeling, and that the walls weren't straight. All of these things would drive an american batty.
so learned to relax and paint my front door royal blue.