My dining room has been many things other than a dining room over the years. It’s been storage for donation items, a warehouse when my husband started his business, and the perfect spot for Santa to leave a trampoline. (That was actually pretty fun.) The open space was also good for parties and Wubble Bubbles. Not that it wasn’t great having a trampoline and a warehouse in the front of the house, but I am happy that we have a proper dining room these days. Keep reading to see how we transformed the space with DIY projects and dark wall paint.
MY DINING ROOM BEFORE
When you buy a house in our area, they pretty much come standard with “formals,” or a dining room on the left and a living room on the right when you enter the front of the house. This is what our dining room looked like when we bought the house. As you can see, it’s pretty yellow. The whole front of the house was yellow. We had no choice but to live with for quite a few years, so that is what we did. One year, after the hubs moved to a proper warehouse, I decided it was finally my time to have an actual dinning room. So, I hired my trusty painter and had him paint the dining room and scrape the ceiling. Not only were the walls yellow, but we also had a yellow popcorn ceiling. We painted the ceiling white and the walls a very boring and neutral beige color. While the ceiling was a dramatic change, the walls were dull and boring. You could barely tell he painted it.
DINING ROOM MAKEOVER TAKE ONE
Here are the boring paint colors we chose from and the boring paint color we painted. Also, I think we had already painted in the picture above where my daughter is holding the cheetah. See? Not a dramatic difference. And, that’s as far as I ever got on my own.
DINING ROOM MAKEOVER TAKE TWO
It wasn’t until I enlisted the help of a friend and professional that I was able to put together my dining room. I saw how she had used this beautiful dark wall paint in a space and it made me wonder if I could pull that off in my dining room. Since I had tons of natural light coming in and a beautiful white ceiling without popcorn, I thought it would work. Once she said it would work, I went for it. This time I painted the walls myself.
DARK WALL PAINT
The color is Iron Ore from Sherwin Williams. As you can see I have trim on the walls. I considered and even tried to paint the trim a different color, but decided it looked more updated to paint the trim the same color as the wall. This room was fairly labor intensive as I had to roll the paint where I could and use a brush in between and on the trim. I highly recommend green Frog tape if you are painting a dark color against light trim. I used it to tape off the trim at the bottom and top. My line at the top would have been all over the place without tape.
KRISTEN FAGELMAN DESIGN
Kristen Fagelman of Kristen Fagelman Design is my friend who helped me with this project. Check out her Instagram right here. I highly recommend her if you are in the DFW area. She is extremely talented and professional and knew what I wanted when I didn’t know what I wanted. She found this table which was not easy because my dining room is pretty long. This is a ten foot table when fully extended and it fills the space very nicely. I love how the color of the table contrasts with the wall color.
Next, she found these wing back chairs and gorgeous red plaid fabric and had the chairs reupholstered. Aren’t they gorgeous? She also found the fabulous art you see on the wall. They definitely add a pop to the space and help break up the black on the wall.
She found the white chairs we have on the sides of the table. Check out the detail on the back. Don’t you love the nail head trim and the round pull?
What about the floor? Well, as you can see, I have great hard woods and with all of my animals, we decided to go without a rug. That’s just one less thing to keep clean in my house.
The final step was a chandelier change out. We chose something bold with great personality.
I ordered this beauty online. I love the look and it’s extremely light weight. No animals were harmed in the making of this chandelier. These horns are cast from naturally shed antlers. These chandeliers you could even paint different colors. This one came white and that was just what we wanted. You can also choose the color of the chain and we went with black. It makes this space.
DIY PROJECTS
Also, in this space was a piece of furniture that was my grandmother’s. It was originally a secretary, but I painted it and repurposed it. It’s now a china hutch. You can see that DIY here.
I also recently completed another little DIY lamp project with some gold leaf that that you can see right here.
MY DINING ROOM AFTER
I get tons of compliments on this space and I finally love my dining room. If you have a ton of natural light and you balance out dark wall paint with light furnishings, you should do it. Paint a dark color. It adds so much drama and coziness to a space.
Here is the finished product. I hope you see something you like and get inspired to go dark and bold with your next paint choice.
OR JUST PAINT THE TRIM
Here is another room in my house where I really considered painting the walls a dark paint color, but decided against it. Instead, I just painted the trim a dark paint color. If you can’t commit to painting your walls a dark paint color, consider painting your trim instead. Check it out here.
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Love your dining room redo. Very classy, and I love the colors.