Thanks, robinj. Your stairs are a knockout. It may have been your original post that flashed in my mind when I had the idea to do this...I know I've seen it before. Now I'm probably just as confused as when I started, but I will take my time with this one. It REALLY helps to see one with similar colors to mine. My stairs are nowhere near as grand or interesting architecturally as yours, and that is probably why I'm looking for something to make them more so. Or, it's entirely possible that I'm trying to put a silk purse on a sow's ear; LOL, in which case I should just leave it alone and accept the fact that the stair railing is not my favorite feature of my house and leave it at that. I have until mid week to let the painter know; or I just pass on this one until some other work gets done. (New light fixture, for instance!!)

Yknow, IMHO, I wish we all could drop the "D" word from our vocabulary. If we love it , if its well made, if its functional - then a place can be found for it, period. In other words - your china cab is just fine, and it does look good on the side rather than viewed head on. That said of course we like our rooms freshened up now and then - but I think you can jazz it up in other ways incl choosing a new color ILOVE greens/browns/tans, but the pea soup color Im kind of tired of. (or so it looks on my monitor anyway, which has been known to be wrong.) Definitely think about going deeper richer. Dont know if Penny's or Anglo's deep dark colors are good for you but it gives you an idea at least of what deeper/richer could do for you. If all else fails maybe you could just take the living room color and just go a few steps darker/more intense with it. Let the DR be cozy and intimate complete w/ a big china cabinet - why not? The DR should relate well to the LR, and that would be one way of doing it. Minor quibble - I would think about that wall space where the china cab was - is there a third pic that could fit in there? With cabinet moved, that wall becomes very significant. Not liking just the two pics , needs to be 3 I think..... Or some other wall decor or arrangement .... minor thing, so perhaps just wait for the inspiration or right thing to come along.

Since you are not showing any other part of the space, there is no way to know what colors would work. How high is the wall? One option would be to leave the beams (rafters?) wood and to paint only the flat area.

You might want to look up early 1900s color schemes from the Arts&Crafts movement - aka Craftsman or Mission style (sorta).C... just for inspiration, you wouldnt have to go full-blown A&C in your decor or anything. What you have in mind sounds very sympatico. Those styles all were a reaction from the stuffy fussy Victorian era, and emphasized natural materials like stone and wood and took inspiration from colors from nature. You know - you do have quite a nice color scheme already picked for you in your stone work. Do you like that stone? Im seeing some nice blue grays, browns, gold-browns and the mortar beige of course.