Check out the following sources for expert advice:

This Old House- 1000s of ideas in the photo galleries at thisoldhouse.com. Browse exterior paint schemes, crown molding samples and great kitchen remodels.

The New Color Book (Chronicle Books)- Think of this as a flip book for grown-ups: the pages are cut horizontally into three strips- showing photographs of floors, walls, and ceilings- that allow you to flip back and forth and try out different color combinations in living rooms and bedrooms. While each colored strip corresponds to a Glidden paint color, we can color match it to any manufacturer's paint. This may save you a small fortune in test quarts and hours of guesswork.

The Not So Big House By Susan Susanka (Taunton)
This Minneapolis architect's 1998 classic will transform the way you view your home. Filled with more than 200 color photographs, detailed floor plans, and priority lists, Susanka's book has proven so popular that it has spawned five best-selling sequels but the original is still the one to own. An excerpt: Today's houses still wear the archtectural equivalent of a hoop skirt, even if the accessories seem more contemporary. While we've been busy evolving over the past century, most of our houses have not. Their evolution has been constricted by outdated notions of what we think we need for resale. At the turn of the new century, most houses are designed for the turn of the last. It's time to rethink our houses and to let them become expressions of the way we live. A Not So Big House can be Not so Big because the 'dinoasaur' rooms are replaced with spaces that reflect the way we eat and the way we live. The floorplan of the Not So Big House is a map, not a fossil, that reveals the lives of the people who live in it today.