painting three large rooms

I need help. I have a 1927 arts and crafts house. It is a large house and consequenlty has three large rooms that are public.

Two are living rooms and the other is a dining room. Imagine a very large room on each side of the front door and an enormous room just beyond. They are so large they have archways between them. The previous owner painted the living rooms a deep gold color and the dining room a dark green. The gold I could do without and the dark green is so dark there does not seem to be enough lighting fixtures in the whole world to brighten this room. The ceilings are 9' and white. Everyone who sees the dining room says "oh how neat!" but I am not that crazy about it. My neighbor said the previous color of the room was a dark red. Whoa!

Anyway being a more traditional decorator I wanted to paint all three rooms and I don't have any conflicts on what colors to paint (and it is neat that because the rooms are so large I don't have many limits). The trouble is having that much space devoted to one color or technique. If I paint every room the same it will look like an institution but if I don't I am struggling with what colors to do. I want it too look intentional and coodinated but not the same.

I could paint the living rooms one color - and rag it with another color and reverse them in the dining room. Or I can do what the previous owner did and choose two different colors that are unrelated (the gold is real warm and red on the under tone and the green is really a blue green)

I am not an interior decorator - just a computer technician. Can someone offer some advice here. I keep hearing from DH that it is "just paint" but when you consider the time it takes to do it - if you hate it - then it is not just paint!

Help!