Painting as been a huge part of our renovation. I honestly could never see a paint brush again and I would be fine with that. Nevertheless I so have some experience painting and here is what we did and what we use in our house.
1. Ralph Lauren Paint. I really like their paint colors. The colors are unique and perfect. They also have subtle differences between shades that can make a world of difference. You can see the paint colors we used above. We used Coastal Beige in the common areas of the house, Hopsack in our bedroom, Orion Gray in our kitchen and Picket Fence White for the trim in Interior Satin. For the walls we used Interior Eggshell, which is the RL equivalent of flat.
2. Shur Line painting tools. They sell large paint pads to use instead of rollers which really cut down on having to do a second coat.
3. FrogTape. I saw this on television and decided to give it a try. Normal painting tape has a lot of bleed through. FrogTape cuts down on that. I do have to say that it doesn't work miracles so if you are working with uneven surfaces (horse hair plaster for instance!) there still will be some bleedthrough but if it's a flat surface this stuff is great.
Those are our painting tips!