Wallpaper in Better Homes & Gardens Magazine, pt III

Related to my two recent posts – Ahhhh, now here’s one done right, IMO.

Flip through and look at page 53 of the February 2011 issue. Here we have a lovely dining room done in the popular color scheme of tan, soft brown, and pale aqua. Very soothing (this color palette is often used in bedrooms and bathrooms, and referred to as “spa like”.)

Here we have another oversized version of a traditional pattern, tan and white, on a soft aqua background. The furnishings are also modern takes on traditional style, where the designer has taken a classic style but made it more streamlined and clean cut. Other accessories in the room are the same – mirror, lamp, and the curtains are brown-on-white in a huge zig-zag pattern.

As someone who works with wallpaper every day, what I find interesting in this room is the paper going from floor to ceiling. Quite often, dining rooms are done with the wallpaper on the top 2/3 of the wall, and either wooden wainscotting or paint on the bottom 1/3, with a chair rail inbetween. This treatment works very well in dining rooms, powder rooms, and breakfast rooms.

Normally, I wouldn’t want to see so much pattern going down to the floor in a dining room. But the room in the photo works well. Part of it is the harmony in colors, and the limited palette.

Another reason this room works is the scale of the pattern on the wallpaper. The huge scale of the paper’s design enables it to stand out against the legs of the table and chairs, instead of everything swallowing each other up and getting lost in the pattern.

The key here in using non-conventional twists on classic design, is the large size of the pattern and the two-hue color scheme.

Tags: Better Homes & Gardens, color scheme, design, dining room, pattern, wallpaper