I'd keep 'em
neutral.

It does depend on your furniture and furnishings.....
For example, I have a red, orange and pink(!) fabric sofa and a blue and grey fabric on my Grasshopper chair and ottoman, as well as the Zebra fabric on my Aalto tank chair, so the walls stay white and carpet grey. I can't introduce and serious color to the wall, can I?

If your stuff is all neutral, then, by all means, add some color to your walls, but remember that too much wall color will stiffle and color you want to introduce to your furniture.

I'd rather keep the walls neutral and either furnish with color or get some cool colorful artwork!

White walls = Dorm/Starter Apartment
plain white walls always equal a dorm room or a starter apartment to me. You can do a neutral that can be calm & restrained and still not-white.

I think the Bauhaus room especially should have color on the walls. Otherwise it ends up being a little too severe and like the lobby of a bank. Putting a color on the walls will immediately add a cozy, human touch to things.

The kitchen can handle brighter colors - yellows or blues. The bedroom could probably handle something a little cooler to contrast the warm wood tones. Primaries also can be brought in with soft furnishings, curtains, rugs, etc.

And worse case scenario - you paint something a bright color, hate it, and paint over it. A little work, but then at least you know what it looks like with a strong color.

Thanks for the ideas guys,...
Thanks for the ideas guys, but I'm getting a lot of conflicting ideas, so still not sure which is the best way to go to maintain a "modern" approach to the color of the walls. Perhaps if I explain my goal, it'd help. In the neutral grey/white/black Bauhaus living room, I'd rather go for "style" than "warmness". My furniture makes a (modernist) statement, so I want my walls to make a similar statement, for the sake of consistency! Even if that means keeping them plain white. Consistency is what I'm after. Whatever color(s) is "normally" used for a neutral minimialist Bauhaus environment, that's the color I want! Some of the ideas I've bounced around for the Bauhaus room are: painting everything just a fresh coat of white, using slightly different shades of white 'artistically' (ex. a big white squiggle with a roller, over the background of white), painting two walls light grey, other two white.

For the MCM rooms (bedroom / kitchen), well the furniture is a bit different. The bedroom for example is just chock full of beiges, woods, white and tans (even the rug). The only color, really, are the paintings on the walls. As IKEA says, "beige is boring". So wouldn't neutral (which I assume means white or beige) just emphasize the lack of color in the room? Question in my mind is, is it better to keep the walls neutral here, in order to stay with "mid-century modern" design constraints, or add color (ie. green) as a contrast to the furnishings? I was even thinking orange for the kitchen, but I'm just not sure if this is in keeping with the modern style I wish to maintain throughout the apt. I tried to make my bathroom look like a hotel bathroom, so I really don't mind if it a room reminds people of a museum or bank! I've got a museum/banker type clock in the Bauhaus room, so why not.

Spanky: That burnt orange is a beautiful color. I could see that in the kitchen.

Figure out first what your goal is.
I guess I'm a little confused as to what you wish to accomplish. Is it your goal to have the house be a museum? There are lots of facets of modernism and it sounds like you haven't figured out exactly what you want to do.

I get that you have furniture that is important to you - but why does it need to be a 'statement'? And what is that statement? And if you're trying to be true to the Bauhaus aesthetic, why would you want to gum it up with a funny squiggle on the wall?

Just because BH furniture is a little severe doesn't mean that the entire aesthetic needs to be. One only has to look at the color work of Annie Albers or Gunta Stotzl (sp?) to see that vibrancy and color played important roles. Little gems like the Farnsworth house use wood tone as a color unto itself, and the Glass house utilizes the natural world surrounding it.


Below are some photos of an LC Building in Berlin, a link to LC's Villa La Roche, and a very clear example of bad Bauhaus furniture arrangement.






http://flickr.com/photos/fotofacade/393084056/

LS....
if all I was chrome furniture with all black leather, I'd introduce more color than is in that nice picture.....

Maybe get a darker colored dog.

Orange you glad I didn't say banana

indeed
Indeed Olive,

Light is very important. Without light : no colour.
What I always do is : put a sample (on a piece of cardboard or paper) on the wall and leave it there throughout the day and evening.
That way you can see how the colour changes with the light.
Sometimes you can be really surprised how colourtone can change.

Anyway : don't be afraid of colour!

Thanks for the additional...
Thanks for the additional responses. It's been educational for me, allowing me to expand my thoughts on the subject. I asked about wall paint color because being no expert on modern interior design, I thought that there was a certain "post-modern aesthetic" that I should follow; at least for my post-modern room (the others are done in a warmer mid century modern). You know, like you shouldn't wear white after Labour Day, so maybe, you're not supposed to paint your walls in color (other than white), if you have a post-modern clinical room, as shown in the above picture with the Le Corbusiers everywhere. (I dont have Le Corbusiers in this room, but I have the same Kandinsky chair in that photo, and the sofa is pretty close to the LC). It didn't occur to me that the "paint squiggle" idea I threw out, for example, does not follow the post-modern or Bauhaus aesthetic, because of the curves.

I had seen documentaries on the Bauhaus institute, but never saw rooms with that kind of color - or perhaps I didn't notice that. So I guess this means that there are no hard and fast rules for what color the walls should be, whether we're talking about post-modern rooms or mid-century modern ones. In my post-modern room, my intention was to add color by way of accents, like paintings, rather than large spaces like walls. I was afraid that colored walls would upset the austere, minimalist environment I was trying to create with the furniture, and look amateurish. Otherwise it might end up looking like post-modern furniture in a victorian house - or someone just didn't bother to paint the walls when they moved in.

Olive: All that stuff about where the sun is coming in and the activities of the room dicating its color mood well.... the thing is, I don't really use the post-modern Bauhaus room, whether day or night. Only on a rare occasion when I want to watch a movie. But its the first room you see when someone enters, so I don't mind if it reminds one of a museum. I like modern art museums! That's why I wanted the (modern Bauhaus type) furniture to dictate what the walls and entire room looks like. Since the furniture is minimalist, it seemed to make the most sense that the walls be minimalist. Even if I were to color the walls in this room, I'm not sure what would work with the furniture, since its kind of sort of like the LC picture above - a room where the furniture, and even some paintings, is mostly absent of colors (other than black, grey, white, and some red).

Greeat ideas, thanks. I'm...
Greeat ideas, thanks. I'm recording all contributions here for future reference. Olive, aside from the colors you mentioned, all of which I like, what do you think about that burnt yellow in the picture above that WoodyWood posted (for my Bauhaus post-modern room)?

Are we talking about the...
Are we talking about the same pic? I'm referring to the burnt yellow wall with the white chair and black clock, not the burnt orange wall with the framed comic book.

Yep, same pix
I love the color that I see on the scren, but it is a fairly strong color, not at all what I was talking about. Or at least that's what I'm seeing...wysiwyg isn't true on every computer!