I know Honeysuckle Pink is the color of the year, but I seem to be recommending blue for dining rooms these days.
Why is that, I wonder? I’ve never thought of blue as a particularly appetizing color, but it seems as though blue has been just the ticket for several dining rooms I’ve been working on.
For the client below, we (I) just couldn’t bring ourselves (myself) to paint the walls goldy beige, which was the original plan.
Oops.
But don’t the blue walls look great with the paisley drapes and Jaipur rug? The client is so pleased. And we all know that a happy client = happy bossy.
Another client is moving into an adorable bungalow, and the winning color for that DR is Benjamin Moore’s 2062-50 Blue Jean. Not that ANY color wouldn’t have been a vast improvement over the Merry Marigold that’s in there now. (That name’s a guess.)
I think one of the reasons blue keeps presenting itself as The Dining Room Solution is that it pulls out the blues in Oriental rugs so nicely. This is a dining room I did for some super duper clients several years ago. The rug was a given, but we didn’t want neutral walls. We used Benjamin Moore’s HC-150 Yarmouth Blue, if memory serves…
I don’t go in for blues that are too periwinkle, as in this dining room:
It’s my own bias, but periwinkle will forever remind me of Laura Ashley bedrooms. (It sure looks fab w/ those red/orange light fixtures, though, doesn’t it?)
Warmer blues are safer for a dining room.
No, you have to be careful that a blue dining room isn’t too cold. My mother told me that her English mother-in-law had an ICE BLUE dining room, and the effect was, well, chilly. (Mind you, I bet Grannie looked fabulous in that room, which may not have been unintentional.) I can see how an icy blue dining room might be a 40s holdover, can’t you?
A client and I are planning to do a navy blue dining room this fall. (We’re renovating, or we’d be doing it tomorrow, we’re so excited about it.) In LACQUER, no less. Yum.
First dinner guest caught licking the walls should win some sort of prize. Suggestions?
Annie Elliott – aka bossy color – is an interior decorator and design blogger in Washington, D.C. She’s also the creator of the “bossy basic,” a one-time service to jump-start the interior design process in your home.