How to achieve elegance in a room

I have found no matter how you think it will loook do it as wife want's - At the end of the day you can say -It wasn't me who picked the colours - I only slapped them on. Also write it down in a little book and hide it.

I can assure you whatever you do will be back to bite you.
 
I tend to think of walls as a canvas! Of course the colour is important, but it's just a foundation. What's really important it what you put on them - pictures, mirrors, curtains, etc.

A good idea is to take a look at the Dulux website for ideas. They also match colours depending on the look you are after. And always pay attention to their "colours of the year".

In general darker colours make rooms look smaller, so it depends on the size of the room as to how dark you should go. Personally I hate white and much prefer darker colours but you need BIG rooms to get away with it.
 
Dark colours can also look better when used in moderation, as a feature wall with the remainder in a much lighter neutral or you could try inverting it with 3 dark walls. Depends if the room has a natural feature such as a fireplace to emphasise, then I'd do the former. Plus it's also about building up layers such as framed pictures & dressing windows etc.
 
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Scam said:
Heh well we all have to compromise :)

If she’s thinking of matching above-the-picture-rail to the same colour as the ceiling, the technical argument against that is that it pulls the ceiling down and makes the room feel smaller and less high. Helpful tidbit for you :p
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Ceilings are 2.4m. Is that tall enough to do the picture rail idea do you think?
 
danlightbulb said:
Ceilings are 2.4m. Is that tall enough to do the picture rail idea do you think?
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No is the answer to that. 2.4 is a standard height to a room these days as it's a sheet of plasterboard height.
The picture rail idea stems from Victorian / Edwardian style houses with a ceiling height of 3m or so that draws the eye down so not really suitable in a lower ceiling height environment
 
Just for contrast, my house has 2.4m ceilings and picture rail. It had it originally, house was built in the 50s, when I ripped out the old picture rail they were fixed to the wall with dowels as wall anchors, obviously before plastic rawl plugs were available.

Has them upstairs too. If you're interested, they were exactly 15 inches from the ceiling down to the top of the rail. When I replaced the picture rail with new stuff I put them at the same height. So the photos you see are an 8ft (2.4m) ceiling with picture rail 15 inches down from that.
 
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danlightbulb said:
And her proposal is to paint one wall dark
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No.

danlightbulb said:
I have only ever used very light colours
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Yes.

danlightbulb said:
For this reason Im strongly favouring half wall panelling.
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This can work well for corridors / halls and 'snugs' but not for a room in an ordinary house.

danlightbulb said:
She also favours wooden (or laminate) floors in bedrooms rather than carpet.
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They're cold in winter and you can slip and go flying with a very hard landing if you step on a discarded garment or a rug.
 
If you do get mouldings, I wouldn't recommend the plastic orac stuff. The coving is plaster coving, the picture rail is orac plastic stuff, in hindsight I'd have got wood or plaster picture rail too.
The plastic stuff is lighter and easier to handle but it's much harder to fill and sand, and so harder to make the mitres look good. As well it doesn't take paint very well despite it saying it does.
 
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danlightbulb said:
Ceilings are 2.4m. Is that tall enough to do the picture rail idea do you think?
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It's really up to you. My only point was that by painting above the picture rail the same colour as the ceiling the impression you give is of a lower ceiling - which in a period house (or any house) isn't really what you want.
 
Dado rails were the first thing we ripped off our walls when we bought this place.

Never understood why you would purposefully put something waist height to just bang against and generally get in the way.

If anything I prefer height to be accentuated rather than have rails break the view.
 
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adidan said:
Dado rails were the first thing we ripped off our walls when we bought this place.

Never understood why you would purposefully put something waist height to just bang against and generally get in the way.

If anything I prefer height to be accentuated rather than have rails break the view.
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They were originally to stop the backs of chairs hitting walls I believe.
 
Yeah bit stuck then really.

No picture rails (ceiling too low), no dado rails (too 80s), no feature wall (too noughties), no dark colours all over (too gimp basementy).

Not sure what's left other than magnolia full coverage.
 
danlightbulb said:
Yeah bit stuck then really.

No picture rails (ceiling too low), no dado rails (too 80s), no feature wall (too noughties), no dark colours all over (too gimp basementy).

Not sure what's left other than magnolia full coverage.
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Hm, yeah, I guess it's always easier to say what not to do.

I find paintings and art can be enough to lift a room but I'm not the most elegant of people.
 
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Well guys Ive posted the picture in other threads but this one was about trying to get an elegant look and in my mind I have failed.

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Ignore the carpet for now, that will be wooden floor eventually.

But Im struggling to like the greens. One on the right looked really dark on the sample card, but turns out actually quite bright when the sun is on it. The other green is strange, in some lights it looks grey, in other lights green, in other lights a bluey tint. It looked way lighter on the sample card but in reality it feels like a similar tone to the other wall.

I think either colour would have been better as the sole colour, I don't think the two colours go well together. Neither colour has that rich feeling that you see on showroom images.

Did we not go dark enough? Or was green a bad choice altogether? Or perhaps you actually like it? Im torn, I don't dislike the colours individually but it wasn't what I wanted the room to look like.
 
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