is red, by any other name as bright...?

...my nearly 80 year old "bungalow",(a variation on a Sears kit "Pendleton"), is a small (1100 sq ft+) English Tudor(brick with stucco and "half-timbering")built in 1931...I am the proud owner of hardwood floors, a fireplace and a breakfast nook...the crowning glory is the eastern facing living room/dining room,(about 35 ft long)...there are 3 French door windows in the dining room and the living room has a wall of windows also...this room is uncharacteristically large because someone in the houses' distant past removed the dividing wall between the two rooms, creating one large, bright space, anchored on the north by the fireplace and on the south by the always bright breakfast nook,which being the corner also has a southern window as well as an eastern "bay"...since I retired, [June,2005],I've been "working" at redecorating...Mom's illnesses and subsequent death(Jan.2007) have not only interupted my progress, but often have brought it to a halt... not to mention the influx of Mom's stuff I needed to keep, added to my own clutter....argh...!...but thanks to some friends[Miz Minka & Mr Greenthumb], I've been able to make some inroads....I have a carpenter coming to fix the closet door hinge[as soon as the new one gets here,of course,it's on 'back order']he will also install the custom wood shutters I've had for the nook for over a year...and next week another friend will be helping me get the stuff out of the dining room so we can clean the floors and prepare to paint...in the past , I painted the ceiling,walls and woodwork all the same color[beige]...I liked the way the light in the fall and winter made a cozy "peach-y" glow...but when I painted the nook and kitchen[as part of a re-model 2003-4],my love of "earth tones" took over, so I used a sunny yellow in the nook and pumpkin in the kitchen,with a creamy ceiling and woodwork and a dark red accent wall that faces the southern exposure...it took me weeks to find that red and 3 coats over primer to make it "right"...now, I've been using the tools at Benjamin Moore.com to find colors[you can paint walls and see how it looks under certain light situations...very cool]...of course when I go to the BenM store,I find small sample bottles and that the red I love comes only as exterior paint...[I want interior "satin"] all other reds are too much of a compromise, but I have no choice...so I buy a couple of quarts of 2 shades of red and a sample of another[I want a deep red ,the kitchen red isn't right for the DR"light",not too purple or too brown...or too orange...like ruby port....],as well as other tan-ish/beige-y colors for the other 3 walls,ceiling off white,woodwork creamy white and the madness continues...at OSH... I find 2 promising reds, so I get a quart of each.... I know it will take at least 3 coats to get the true color and different tans go with different reds...and I need to do this without making the woodwork look yellow or the ceiling look gray....this is going to be almost as much fun as my last mammogram or pap test...this kind of frustration is probably why I painted everything beige before...but I'm sure that all this fun is only the opening salvo...I'll probably change my mind a number of times before I lose it [my mind, that is...]...stay tuned...