"In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now, G*d knows, anything goes..." Those immortal words & the jazzy, syncopated tune that accompanied them are by the late, great Cole Porter, whose business it was to be attuned to all the latest fads & foibles of the fashionable set, and these days, it's kind of the same way with the question of chair rails & where to put the dark color, too. People remind me all the time that "There are no rules!" Please. There are always rules, and just because a lot of people ignore them--or never bothered to learn them in the first place--doesn't mean they don't exist, and like the judge says, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Knowing how (and when) to break a rule is one of the skilled decorator's greatest tricks, but in order to make it work, you first have to know the rules. Otherwise, it's meaningless. Decorating without rules is like playing tennis without the net: what's the point? Of course, we live in a free country, so people can put the dark color below the chair rail if they want, but doing it that way is a fairly recent development, dating not much further back than the time the time Madonna wore her bra on top of her sweater, setting off a tacky (and, fortunately, short-lived) fad among the middle-schoolers in the town where I used to live. That's kind of what I think of whenever I hear someone proclaim "There are no rules!" The Green Room at the White House after Theodore Rooselvelt's renovations. Anyway, that dark-color-on-the-bottom bit took off after somebody on one of the early cable decorating shows did it that way, and since then, it's become common, but historically speaking--especially when it's traditional decorating you're talking about in the first place--it's all wrong, and for a good reason. Here's the thing: in decorating, most "rules"--if you take the time to do any research about them--originated with simple practicality & common sense. Historically, dark paint (or fabric, or wallpaper)--that is, the expensive stuff, what with the high cost of pigments--went on the upper walls because that's where people would see it, not down below the chair rail, where it would not only be below eye level--especially when seated at a dining table--but where it would also be partially obscured by furniture pushed up flat against the walls, which is where the term "straightening a room" came from. If the woodwork--including the chair rail, which was there not for aesthetics but to protect expensive materials & fragile plaster--was painted at all in such a room, it was generally painted white, because white paint (or lime wash) was cheap & it could be refreshed easily when it got dingy. Anyway, that's the logic behind the traditional dark-above-light-below color distribution. Even if the specific reasons for that distribution no longer apply, the look still seems right, especially in a traditional decor. If a designer (or decorator) decides to ignore historical precedent for one reason or another, that's one thing, but if he or she is truly unaware of it, I'd start to worry, because such historical background is part of the traditional education in the field. Ignorance of that of thing would be a big red flag to me. Kind of like the be-jeweled & be-scarfed "designer" I met at a suburban decorator showhouse who--totally without irony--referred to blotchy mess of a would-be Venetian plaster wall as having "a lovely faux-pas finish." It was the funniest thing I'd heard in a week. Regards, MAGNAVERDE

For the most part, my furniture is casual and neutral. The room next to the dining room (but not visible from the dining room) is the family room and it will hold a brown leather Ethan Allen sectional, muted orange wingback-ish chairs, and a rug with muted green, brown, gold, and orange squares. However, the orange chairs are in storage and due to some issues we had with the storage unit, they may not come out in usable shape. So the rug and orange chairs might be replaced with any variety of items in any variety of colors. Regarding metallic paint - that's not really in keeping with our style preferences. DH wants the dining room to be a dark room but I agree with johnatemp that I won't want to walk by a cave all the time. DH also had the same suggestion as creekylis -- to have the wall under the chair rail painted with the white trim paint to give the illusion of wainscoting. And I'm open to that. The walls are flat so I think that would look okay. As Les917 suggested, I think we need a rug to lighten the room a bit. I've been going through magazines and catalogs in an attempt to find a great room I can mimic but haven't stumbled upon anything that I love. But I think that we'll have a good result if we use the trim below the chair rail, chocolate brown above the chair rail, a sparkly chandelier, mirrors and lamps to create some light, and a good rug, we should be okay. Thank you, everyone, for your advice! try_hard ...

It is a done deal!! I did the Behr Sage green on the bottom with the chair rail (bottom)at 36", We have a 9' ceiling. I was so torn between the green on top or bottom, so my DH told me it would be more work to cut the green color in on the top then the bottom because of the ceiling. The baseboard was not installed yet. It kind of gave me a nudge toward the green on the bottom. So all in all I think either way looks great. Sometimes when I see things like, bath matts are out, two colors are out with chair rail, sage green is on its way out or is out, I guess I will not worry about the decorating police patrol. Thanks ladies, I love the pictures they really help with decisions, and you can not believe how much good advice I have gotten from the GW.

I don't think it will make the room bigger, but it will make the red floor and lower walls appear to be a big shallow box, and that can feel confining. It will also emphasize the horizontal, and also the slant in the ceiling, and that often makes a ceiling look lower. Think about the look of bands of two different colors running around the room, and you'll see what I mean. I would also reconsider the chair rail, given that your trim is very slender and feels modern. What if you chose a warm creamy white for the walls, crown, and ceiling, to minimize the line of the slanted ceiling, and painted the trim red to match the floor? The red floor could make the existing wood tone seem quite orange. Then let your son pick a color for the door. In my house years ago, that would have meant metallic pewter, glossy black, or dark raisin purple!