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Annie Elliott Design, Washington DC

Annie Elliott Design

Greater Washington DC

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Cheerful gray dining room: Benjamin Moore’s AC-28 Smoke Embers

Annie Elliott | September 18, 2010

“Cheerful” and “gray” don’t sound like they belong in the same sentence, do they? But look:

gray dining room with wooden table
large curved window in gray dining room

Thanks to painted wainscoting that covers a third of the walls, a dramatic curved window, and a coral rug, gray is anything but dreary in this D.C. dining room….

(When the client’s children grow out of their grab-anything-within-reach-with-their-grubby-little-mitts phase – ah, we remember it well! – we’ll do a floor-length, sheer linen drape on a curved rod on that massive window.)

Benjamin Moore AC28 Smoke Embers

The wall color is Benjamin Moore‘s AC-28 Smoke Embers. It’s a GRAY gray. Not taupe, not lavender, ever so slightly bluish…it could be too dark in a room with less light, but here, it’s a hit.

Benjamin Moore Navajo White

The wainscoting and trim are Benjamin Moore’s excellent off-white standby, OC-95 Navajo White, semi-gloss finish. (We also used Navajo White in a flat finish on the ceiling.)

You may recognize the rug, by the way. Sometimes called the Bogart (Garnet Hill) and sometimes called the Soho, it’s a wool flatweave that works beautifully in both traditional and contemporary settings.

wool flatweave rug Bogart Soho

Where would YOU use gray?

gray dining room with hydrangeas
Annie Elliott – aka bossy color – is an interior decorator and design blogger in Washington, D.C. She has been quoted in publications from The Washington Post to The Seattle Times and is considered an expert on color, residential space planning, and telling people what to do in the nicest way possible.

Category: Color + paint color, Dining room, RugsTag: AC-28 Smoke Embers, Benjamin Moore, dining room, gray dining room, paint color

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