The dining room makeover added a rug and eliminated faux texture walls.

One of my longtime clients asked me to update some rooms in their home. Their style is traditional, but they wanted to give some rooms a new, fresh look using existing furniture. We started in the dining room because they said it felt so uninviting due to the wealth of medium stained wood furniture. Their goal was to make the room one that they wanted to eat in.

Adding to the formal, somewhat drab look were  pale, faux-painted walls above the white wainscoting. In the new look they still wanted the element of texture, but not with the addition of faux painting as they had previously done. Now they wanted the wall paint to change the whole feel of the room and not be faux paint. Luckily the Ralph Lauren paint representative had stopped into my office a few weeks before to show me their latest paint selections. One that caught my attention was their River Rock finish from their Specialty Finishes. This was because it achieved texture on the wall in its finished grainy look. It had the advantage of also being as easily applied as any traditional paint. Its flat grainy surface did not reflect any sunlight which was another benefit to using it.

Because their son was now 10 years old and their dog was now potty trained, they could now consider a rug under the dining room table. The rug of course needed to be one that was dog and child friendly. The first thing we did was determine the proper size of the rug so that it was wide enough to extend past where the dining room chairs would be when you pulled them out to sit in them. Along with this we needed to take into account the curving end of the staircase that extended into the dining room so that the rug did not run into it.

Because the new wall paint was grey, which could be perceived as a drab color, we wanted to include grey in the pattern of the rug but also introduce some other colors in the pattern. The area rug we selected mixed in a deeper shade of grey along with a butterscotch color found in their granite countertops and neutral shades used in other rooms in their house. The oversized floral motif pattern of the rug added some round shapes and flowing lines to soften the wealth of medium stained wood furniture in the room.

Finally to complete the update of the dining room, we added a decorative window treatment on the window with shutters. The Brentano fabric added the butterscotch color on the wall. It also had subtle sequins in its design which added a glamorous element into the room.