Painting the Living Room

I have a confession to make. I’m a little obsessed with painting my living room. I want to paint it so badly that I have spent a LOT of time imagining what it would look like, and today I even made a mockup. I took a “before” picture, which you can see here:

I had a couple of kids over this morning, and my life is actually a lot easier when there are other kids around. I got that whole section of the living room cleaned and vacuumed today! Hoorah! Anyways, you can see how I chose to paint this room about a year and a half ago. Blue on the bottom half all the way around the room. I loved it so much when we did it, but now not so much. The room feels really saturated on the bottom to me, even when it’s clean. All of the color is in the bottom half of the room and I still haven’t figured out a way to make this look good. My cousin, who is in school for interior design, suggested I paint the whole wall a warm grey. Have I mentioned grey is my FAVORITE color? Seriously, it goes with anything. And it’s not brown. Here is a mockup of what I would like to do:

For one thing, we are stuck with this blue carpet. Loved it when we got it, and I wouldn’t mind it now as long as I can get it to work with the rest of the room. I’m thinking painting the walls grey all the way up, then painting the trim, the plant shelves, and maybe the ceiling (?) white. I feel like it creates a cooler palette that is a bit more consistent and modern.  The ceiling is going to be a pain though, so I need to figure out if it’s really necessary. So far I am loving this idea though! Please leave your feedback and your thoughts, I could really use some help. (PS, the color of the carpet in the second picture is MUCH closer to what it is in real life, not the grey color that is in the picture above).