adjoining living/dining room

We have an adjoining formal living room and dining room. There is no wall really separating the two. I would like to build a small doorway to separate the rooms so that we can put a chair rail in the dining. DH thinks the chair rail should run all around the dining and formal, I am not sure that this will look nice. How would you split up the rooms?
I also want to do one wall color in both rooms, and he thinks we should accent the long wall that connects both? Any ideas?

Re: adjoining living/dining room

i think you both have good ideas.

can you build a short half wall on one side that divides the two rooms? that way it's still easy to move between the two, but there is clear definition.

i don't know if a chair rail would work in that situation. it would definitely seem odd to me to have it in one room and not the other. plus i love open floor plans and i would not want to put up and entire wall and doorway between the two rooms.

i also like the idea of painting the long wall connecting the two one accent color, and the rest of the rooms another color.

Re: adjoining living/dining room

I was actually just looking at columns, and we may be able to put a column against the wall separating the two, and then I can go a shade darker in the dining and do the chair rail just in the dining with white on the bottom and color on the top. I forgot what it's called but it looks like wainscoat without the slats, it's solid? That may fix our problem?
The only rason I wouldn't want the accent wall is because my dining room may look starnge since thats the main wall in there?

Re: adjoining living/dining room

is the column in the middle of the room or along one wall? i would love to see a pic!

Re: adjoining living/dining room

Our living room and dining room are connected. The only separation b/w the two is a beam along the ceiling. We have chair rail that runs through both rooms. B/c the rooms really aren't separate, we are going to paint them the same color, even though I really wanted to paint the dining room a different color. My husband thought we could paint the chair rail different colors in each room, but I'm not a fan of that idea. I had also thought that we could perhaps make the beam up top more of an arch so that the rooms would truly be separate, but we'll see if we end up doing that.

We're painting both rooms a tan/beige color and the chair rail will probably be white to match the ceiling, though we're first going to leave it the federal blue it is right now just to see how it looks.

Re: adjoining living/dining room

Posted by headoverheels

is the column in the middle of the room or along one wall? i would love to see a pic!





We haven't actually put a column in yet, but I found a post on here where they put a 6 inch cloumn on the wall separating the 2 rooms, and I think that may work perfectly. I forgot who the post was from though but it kinds looked like this

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Message edited 9/13/2009 11:35:23 AM.

Re: adjoining living/dining room

Re: adjoining living/dining room

I have the exact issue you have. My dining room and living share a wall and the only thing separating them is the header beam across the top.

We are doing the long wall in an accent color and the rest of the room in another.

i can't put up a column although i REALLY want a chair rail, because I need to put my china cabinet in between the two rooms where the colum would go. It's my only option.

Re: adjoining living/dining room

I was looking at my wall where we would put the column, and I have a in wall A/C right there. I wonder if the column would look strange going up to the 10 ft ceiling right next to the beam? Is that why you can't put the column cause I have that beam as well?

Re: adjoining living/dining room