Okay. Since you asked. When I saw the title of your thread, I thought, "Not in Southern California." There surely must be some beadboard used somewhere around here, perhaps in very old houses and farmhouses built by people who came West a hundred years ago for their TB and were trying to bring a bit of home with them, but I never saw it here before Martha Stewart made it popular and Pottery Barn started selling it premade. I also never saw a "Cape Cod" style house here before the '90's, when it became a fad. Or maybe there was one in between all the others, but the whole lapped siding thing is so not here. Stud and stucco is the tradition for being good in earthquakes and fires. The wood siding one did see was all board and batten and mostly seen on ranch houses and barns, including some ranch style tracts. Plus some shake siding (BAD for fires) and that dark angled '70's wood.

Mediterranean is very here. Not that you necessarily are. Still, I wouldn't do beadboard with a stucco house if there were any consideration to having a consistent style. If your interior architecture isn't too distinctively modern, you can probably get away with a lot of the rest of the style in Arin's kitchen if you transpose it to a kind of French-Italian rustic flavor instead of the Atlantic coast feeling in Arin's.

The dog island is much more contemporary looking. It should go fine with your contemporary house the way it looks in the picture. If you want to do it more distressed and rustic looking, you might also want to rustic up the bowls and the bones. For instance, use a matte bowl, maybe even copper (I don't know if that's appropriate for dogs). Maybe use a little glaze around the bone holes, and distress the edges with a file and sandpaper, so they don't look so sharp. You can do it though. Dogs have been traditional for thousands of years. The iconic "bone" shape is probably closer to 20th Century, but who cares? It's cutesy. People have put cutesy touches in their homes since the first caveman found a rock shaped like a frog. I'm a definite fan of a little kitsch in the kitchen. :)

Don't like it. Beadboard belongs in houses built between the Victorian and Craftsman eras--or houses designed to look like they were. A country house, a beachy house, sure, beadboard fits. I saw a newly beadboarded powder room in a '30s stucco, slightly-Deco Tudor, and frankly it looked ridiculous, like someone had ordered the entire room out of a catalog.

Obviously you can do whatever you like. But the more a finish is out of touch with the style of the overall house, the more quickly it will date.

Beadboard that's painted cobalt blue and distressed (whole other topic) might give off a more fitting Mexican vibe, but that may not be your thing either.

Just my $.02.

We put beadboard wainscoting in our master bath when we added it on in the late '90's and it looks just fine in our house, not dated or clashy at all. It just... is. The house is a plain 1949 postwar ranch and that bathroom also has hardwood floor, granite countertop, white-painted vanity (built by a family member) with beadboard insets in the doors, drop-in white sinks for a semi-old-fashioned look, white tile shower, huge whirlpool tub (sort of a mistake but we deal with it)... so basically an older house with a fairly typical "transitional style" '90's bathroom addition. But then I am no style maven: if it looks nice, is reasonably "natural" (not too much plastic) and isn't painted a color that hurts my eyes, I'm usually pretty happy.

I did notice that arin's vintage kitchen that you posted is in San Francisco, according to a post of hers near the bottom of that thread.

Word of caution/ voice of experience: if you do BB, DON'T use knotty pine no matter how cheap it is. Unless you like the look of knotty pine, that is. [grin] If you're going to paint it, make life easy for yourself and just get the MDF stuff. (Shellacked knotty pine that looks like itself is absolutely fine if you like that style, but it doesn't exactly fade into the background like painted would.)

I'm also drawn to beadboard, but I'm an East coast type, with a penchant for victorian, even gothic, and classic country manor. Your choice whether to let this be the element that freshens a known style, or to keep looking. It seems like people can fall in love with a new backsplash every week.

You asked when beadboard is appropriate, and I would have said to protect walls that may need scrubbing, or next to a chair where they may be banging. But that's not the style issue.

You can put beadboard at an angle, which becomes modern eclectic (IMHO !). But I'm a crazy internet denizen; plllog knows kitchens.

@plllog, we actually have original beadboard in a California stucco house, so it was indeed done---though ours is technically considered a California Bungalow rather than a Mediterranean. It's pretty common in the older bungalows around here (our 1915 plans actually specified it), so I'd imagine it might have been used in SoCal too. (We actually haven't decided what to do with the beadboard yet---DH hates beadboard but in this particular area, the beadboard is the wall rather than being on top of plaster, so the quote to rip it off and put a plaster wall up was $$$. Consequently, it's still sitting there while we debate whether to cover it with wainscoting or just leave it as "character," as our plaster guy recommended...which wouldn't be a bad plan except for a couple of holes in it where there used to be plumbing connections! A 1940s remodel had covered it with cabinetry.)

But @the OP, if your question was around where beadboard was traditionally used, I agree with the Victorian/Arts & Crafts answers above---houses built during the 1880s-1920s, broadly speaking. But that's not to say you can't adopt it and use it if you really like it. I would hate it in a MCM house (our friends have that, and while the POs of their house did a lovely remodel, they took a MCM house and put Craftsman moulding and woodwork in it, which is just weird to me). But in a 90s tract home, I don't really have any sense of what the "style" should be (I can't even picture a Mediterranean look there...I think of California Mediteranean homes from the 1920s and 1930s on that front!) so in a funny way you might have more freedom than if you had an older home.

these were great responses!

i laughed at plllog's so much, it was fortunate that i wasn't drinking coffee at the time. now i know that my beadboard love was cultivated by a sinister plot between Martha Stewart and Pottery Barn. :) with Martha's infiltration of the cabinet department Home Depot, heaven knows what i might have done without your intervention.

yes, if this were a period home, i would absolutely want to try to stay true to its history. but there is no history in this place to guide me.

thanks everyone... i truly am decorating-challenged, so this was a big help.

Ironcook: When I was living in San Diego in a 1926 Spanish Revival in an area of 80-100 year old eclectic homes, people were pulling out old beadboard. So it was common enough.

I am matching the style of the kitchen with my old house (though haven't always done this), but I don't think you should be stuck with bland 90's tract home design. So I truly feel you should select something that speaks to you. And I think your picks have a classic design that don't look too "done" or cookie-cutter. I like 'em :)