First read through the post Marti linked to " Marti8a: would love floor to ceiling columns, but think it's out of my budget" Now this might sound weird but you can make your own columns for almost nothing. You can get the long cardboard tubes vinyl comes rolled on and paint them. Add a built up wooden top and bottom using stock wood plywood and molding. Not sure how to mount them but if you get this far I am sure you can figure it out. The cardboard tubes painted will look just like wood. If you want them to look like stone or stucco wrap them with rigid wrap, cast material from craft store,and then cover them with wall mud. This would be such a fun project. The tubes are free. LOL Just about talked myself into doing some for here. That screen can be made for way less money. I am not a fan of it. A hanging fabric screen would hang correctly if you cut the correct angle in the top and flat bottom.Might need a weighted rod in the bottom. You have a really pretty entry.

I have a two story entryway that's painted the same color as my dining room. It leads into my living room which has ten foot ceilings. The living room is green, the dining room is taupe. I just stopped the taupe paint where the ceiling changes. I know it's completely against the rules, but for me it's the best solution. Is there a green paint color that you've already picked out? I think a light olive green would go well with the pumpkin.

Hi Makeithome. I'm not in love with that blue, but it's not my house, so that doesn't matter. What matters is not the specific color, but how it's handled. The existing scheme, with a different color on the stairway wall, looks really off, like the room was never completed. If the stairs were in a room of their own, having a different color in that area would make sense, but this just looks like the painter didn't come back after lunch. So yes, paint the stairway's walls--both sides--the same color as your living room. And don't worry about painting the upper hallway the same color. Use whatever makes sense up there, and let the blue begin on the two separate sides of the stairs. Easy. But here's a caution: the paneling on your inspiration photo looks awkward, and here's why: the dado rail (and the panels below it) is too high. These days, in new houses, building codes mandate higher stair rails than they used to, which messes up traditional proportions. But safety (or "safety") concerns trump aesthetics, so we just have to deal with it & do the best we can. At any rate, dados now need to be higher in stair areas than they used to be, in order to match the rail on the other side & keep the visual balance. But in your inspiration photo, it's even higher than that, and as a result, the panels look clumsy & amateurish. They're too big, there's not enough height between them & the baseboard and there's too much horizontal space between any two adjacent panels. The overall design of this wall makes me think maybe the layout was done by the carpenter, not the architect, and while a few carpenters are up to that sort of thing, many are not. For someone with a better sense of proprortion, coming up with a better design would have only taken twenty minutes, while others could work on it all day and never figure it out. Anyway, all the problems stem from the height of the dado itself. The height of the dado on the stair wall (not the perpendicular landing wall) should either have been lowered at the point where the two landing walls meet, or there should have been a step-down from the current height of the landing's dado down to a lower angled molding at the first step, in the same way that the actual stair rail drops down a foot or so at the same point. That would given the stair wall's panels much better proportions. The good news is that since your stairs have a straight run without a change in direction & you won't be doing any structural work that might triggers the new codes' railing-height, you won't have to deal with that problem. Just make the dado top out at the height of your existing railing. Then add the panels. BTW, if you're going to add a chair rail to your living room, I'd carry it all the way around the room. That way, it will look like it's always been there, rather than something somebody decided to add, then changed their mind.

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