Annie –
I have been reading your blog over the past month and have learned a great deal. Love your writing and your sense of style. This is my dining room.
The rest of my home is in lovely warm colors, yellow, golds, orange coral and red. I have this rug and look what I have done…yikes – too much cold blue.
Can you help? I don’t like the wood chair rail. The white trim is too white, and there’s too much blue. I was thinking of painting the wood and the walls a coral orange…then I dragged a drape into my family room to see what a brown/beige would do to the drapes…
Help! The drapes were expensive but I don’t love – or even like – the room. Thanks,
Susie
PS It is a northern facing room, 1920 home
Dear Susie,
Well. We’ve certainly had issues with blue and cream drapes before, haven’t we? Not once but twice, if I recall; and the second questioner also had blue walls.
But let’s not blame the drapes.
First of all, I don’t think the room is nearly as bad as you do, so please stop beating yourself up.
NOT-SO-BOSSY SOLUTIONS:
Leave the walls blue and put a MUCH richer cream/light taupe on the wainscoting and trim, such as Benjamin Moore’s OC-12 Muslin. Oh heck, do the ceiling, too (matte there, though; semi-gloss on the trim).
- Do what you did in the family room and paint the walls a Muslin-like color. Here’s when you dragged your drapes in there to check it out. It looks perfectly nice:
But you didn’t write to bossy color for UNbossy solutions, did you?
I thought not. Excellent.
BOSSY SOLUTION
I would LOVE to see you put an intense kiwi green above the wainscoting. The advantage of the wainscoting, of course, is that it breaks up the space, so the green won’t be as intense. (You’d leave it and the trim white or paint them a creamier white.)
I caught a glimpse of a gorgeous green in the art in this room, so this can’t come as a huge shock :)
This is Benjamin Moore’s 490 Pine Brook (I wouldn’t have thought this tiny square would look like THIS on the walls; an excellent illustration of why paint swatches are critical.)
Other greens that look more promising in the fan deck than they will here are 546 Courtyard Green, or the super edgy 2147-10 Oregano. You want a green with yellow in it, not a sagey green.
Look for a green glass bowl or a series of green lacquer trays for the center of the table. And put a green seat cushion on the wicker chair in the corner, if that chair is usually parked there.
You’d have to be ok with the green complementing rather than matching the rug. If it bugs you, replace it with a large sisal or seagrass rug. That will make the whole room fresher, anyway.
But the green will look fantastic with your drapes.
I hope these suggestions are helpful, Susie! Good luck!