The many colors of house-hunting

Phew! I am back from our whirlwind trip to the Bay Area to try and secure housing. Emphasis on "try"... Boy oh boy, are houses out there expensive! I guess it's all about "location, location, location".

Nondescript white-walled room. Totally forgettable.
Really dated kitchen in desperate need of a make-over.

While house hunting, I had a completely different perspective from that which I normally inhabit- that of adviser. Often, I have clients who want to spruce up their house, but are concerned about selecting colors that will make the house easier to sell, eventually. So, here I was, a potential buyer, examining houses for my own needs. I have to say that staging and colors helped a TON with the appeal of a property. Of course, I'm rather biased, but in my head, I imagined I could see through what wasn't there to what I would do to the spaces. But after days and days of touring properties, you don't want to expend the energy. Turns out, I was much more intrigued (as were other house-seekers I noticed), by those spaces with color.
Love, love, loved the colors in this house. We were ready to move in, and I didn't even have the desire to change their paint choices. This house wasn't staged, but really tastefully done by the owners. After peeking in an office cabinet, I discovered someone living there works as a color consultant.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, staging refers to taking a house for sale, and spiffing it up to make it more appealing to potential buyers. Sometimes, a stager works with existing furniture and accessories, editing where necessary, re-arranging items to maximize space and flow. Other times, stagers will bring in furniture and pieces into an empty house, to give the buyer a sense of how the space would feel when its inhabited.
Testing the authenticity of a staged "bed" that turns out was just cardboard boxes draped in fabric. Aren't these walls just screaming for chromatic assistance? A distinctly unsuccessful staging, I hate to say.

Sometimes, stagers will go further, advising refinishing floors or painting walls. I've got to tell you, it made a huge difference as we were strolling through our 15th house of the day.
Soft yellow walls and muted sophisticated accent colors (check out the throw pillows, rug, even the golden bowl on the table) really made this room appealing. The touch of green helped round out the palette. This was another favorite house, but alas, an offer was already in on it.
Those properties with unique, rich or even just understated colors on the walls certainly made the place feel more homey and more personal. Loved the pumpkin.
There's something so sterile about an empty, white walled house. This fireplace wall would have looked much better with an accent color to ground it in the space.
I'm not big on black counter-tops, as they are hard on the eyes, ergonomically. Not enough contrast between the work surface and items on top. But I loved how the stager took cues from the existing palette to bring in black and white plates in the empty cabinets and pulled in touches of bright blue here and there. I couldn't get enough of the sunshine streaming through the window-just like a cat, I suppose...

I noticed it in new apartment complexes, as well. They advertised "designer colors" and would point out accent walls in the model unit that were either standard, or not included.

image source

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera when we toured the complex, so I can't show you the cool hall and unit colors. In any case, evidently, the general public has become much more color and design savvy, for the salespeople to emphasize color so much.

So, that's just a little taste of our adventure out west. For the time being, I think we will settle for a rental while we continue the quest for our house. I'd like to hear from those of you who have gone house-hunting in the past: how important were the wall colors in your impression of a property? Did it make a difference in the end when you bought something?