After living with creamy white walls in my dining room for a year (Benjamin Moore Cloud White), I’ve grown tired of them. I think they look flat, yellowish, and tad bitΒ boring (just in this room though, I love this white in other rooms). It’s time to spice things up.
My chandelier and accessories just need something more dynamic to stand against, so it is time to add color and a little bit of architectural interest. I want the room to feel like a cozy, preppy cocoon with happy splashes of color that invites lingering and conversation over long candlelit meals.
So yesterdayΒ hubby and I started on a dining room update project. Our plan is to add a chair rail at 36″, paint the upperΒ wall navy blue, keep the lowerΒ wallΒ white, paint the doors to the bathroom and basement bright white, paint the ceilings the faintest shade of pale blue (the color of which I’m still deciding on), and paint our dining room table a bright white if we get around to it. And perhapsΒ we’ll add wainscoting too if we can figure out how to do it ourselves.
To decide on the shade of navy for the walls, I looked to other items in my home for inspiration. I already have a navy accent wall in the adjacentΒ room (Sherwin Williams Naval), but that color was just way too gray and dark inΒ the dining room, so I knew I needed to go blue-er.
I adoreΒ myΒ cobalt blue Le Creuset dutch oven, thisΒ violet-y blue and white antique saucerΒ (which I plan to hang on the wall later), and this indigo poppy print pillow. Β All of these items have reddish/purple undertones to their blues, and all of the colors of these items make me feel happy. So I Β knew I would feel comfortable with a blue from a similar color family on the wallsΒ and looked for paint chips with correspondingΒ tones.
After testing ninety million navy paint colors, I hadΒ Benjamin Moore mix up Farrow & Ball’s formula for Drawing Room BlueΒ (top sample in the aboveΒ image, which was taken in bad light). I know it won’t be exactly the same in color or quality as a real Farrow & Ball paintΒ but I lovedΒ the sample I put on the wall so I’ll stick with it! It’s really dark but it has those reddish/purple undertones I was looking for and looked fab when I held the objects I loved up to it.
To decide on the color for the ceiling, I looked to this Matisse print which I absolutely adore.Β It has pale periwinkle, pale blue, and blueish light gray in it,Β all of which look great with navy. Though I’m reeeeeally tempted to go the pale periwinkle route, I fear I might regret it so I’m going the pale blue-ish white route. So far I’ve tested Benjamin Moore Palest Pistachio on the ceiling and it is quite pretty but very very light (which might be a good thing).
Here are some inspiration images for my project:
As for my dining room chairs, I’m sorry to say that I have kind of a “whomp whomp” ending to my whole reupholstery dilemma. After receiving the Holy Trinity of No’s (my husband, my mom, and my mother-in-law), I decided to leave the chairs as is for now and save the money for other projects. To achieve a similar effect, I’ve resorted to placingΒ a pair of striped throw pillows on the chairs.
And who knows, maybe I’ll stumble across a setΒ of slimmer square-back Louis chairsΒ that I’ll love even more in the future (I adore the style of these). My whole decision to not reupholster the chairs was further validated by Oliver starting solidsΒ a few weeks ago. Please see below…
Literally, just sweet potato, beets, avocado, banana, EVERYWHERE. How does anyone keep anything clean while feeding a baby? I keep a bib on him and we do spoon feed him ourselves a lot but somehow it just ends up all over the place. My entire house, actually, is just COVEREDΒ in food and puke.Β I wasn’t careful enough about pretreating the spots on his clothes the first week so his clothes have gotten ruined too. I really love how this snap-on high chair saves space in our small house but these messes would make me think to invest a stand-alone high chair. So, yeah. Since I don’t care about the current fabric on my chairs I’m not stressing and am just going to let him and any other future babies destroy them over the coming years.
xoxo,
