I hope you can talk her out of that. The walls are beautiful and there will be glue to remove and a price to pay if you ever want to go back. Most people are removing their paper not putting paper up. Many houses have dated paneling and don't look this nice around the fire place. I still think the middle area would look good grey to match the grey around the opening of the fire place. It would look like a visible chimney. I do like lofts/ industrial looks so this appeals more to me than some people. Show her pictures of red brick walls in loft studios and what they are doing with colors on the interior walls and she can get ideas of what color she wants. This probably sounds odd to you but I l like the dirty spot on the bricks. I wish some pros would weigh in.

Hi, this is a tricky one! I tell you the trend for 'grey's is frying my brain cell currently! It's very hard to make greys go with brown's because in a nutshell, they don't. Grey is a cool colour and brown is warm. Therefore, trying to get the mix right is a nightmare. If you're stuck on the midnight silver, which is a pretty colour, i'd probably have to go with painting the fireplace in the same, midnight silver, but darkening down the alcoves with a darker yet warm grey. Go for the same darker grey on the mantle shelf itself. The bricks would also have to be very dark, as painted bricks can look a little weird. When i paint bricwork, i choose not to paint the grouting. Instead i get a big pallette of similar looking colours, matchpots are good for this because you can buy 6 or 7 for a pound each at B&Q, then i stipple the paint onto the bricks so that they aren't one uniform colour, i've painted concrete to look like brick in this manner, it's very effective. If I were you i'd go for grey tones on the wall that look more taupe as they will sit better with your flooring which is a lovely warm tone. By going with the 'is it grey / is it taupe' colour scheme you will not end up with the cool greys competing with the floor.

Aqua might be a nice wall colour too. I think your kitchen floor tiles are nice. White in the sitting room would be good too and I would ditch the brown carpet in favour of a pale grey or else some natural sisal or similar, some houseplants and colourful artwork. I'd also replace or recover (even with slip covers) the sitting room suite with a grey or taupe cotton or similar and add a couple of zingy, colourful scatter cushions. If you do all this, it may not be necessary to paint the fireplace though, by all means do this if you want. Just be aware that once you paint brick, you can't really get the paint off i.e. it's virtually impossible to bring it back to its natural colour. As this is modern brick and only a fireplace that's not so much of an issue though as it might be in a period house with old brick.

Also, the fire is actually a fake/electric stove... that we never use...