Will a black chair rail work in my kitchen? Calling any decorators!

[ThelmaLou]

My walls are a neutral color called Tumbleweed. My chairs (which very often get bumped against the wall) are painted black. Imagine farmhouse style, kinda distressed, and a large brown wood farmhouse style table. If I pick any color for chair rail paint other than black, I'm going to get black marks on the chair rail. As it stands right now, I have basically a large black stripe going around the wall from the chairs rubbing against it. I do know that if I put in a chair rail, I'll need to paint below it with a darker accent color. That won't be a problem. But then I have baseboard trim that's white. Wouldn't it look bad to have Tumbleweed on the top of the wall, black chair rail next, darker accent color, followed by white baseboard? But then if I do black baseboards in the eat-in area near the table, I don't want that look all through my kitchen. All the other trim in my kitchen is white (doorways, windowsill, etc...)The only other thought I had was to do black wainscoting from the chair rail down, but that seems more involved than what I want. Any ideas would be appreciated. BTW, I do have black in my granite countertops. Also, my cabinets are kind of a golden, peanut butter and honey color.

[Harriet Vane]

I think what you propose will look good with your whole farmhouse scheme.

[susankenny]

Yes, it sounds like it would look just lovely.

 

FWIW, my sister has a beautiful farmhouse, and her home has black baseboards and chair rail throughout...it looks lovely too!

 

Susan

[ThelmaLou]

I think what you propose will look good with your whole farmhouse scheme.

 

Which part of what I propose? So you like the black chair rail idea, but what to do with the baseboards? Black or white? And do I change the rest of the white trim throughout the kitchen to go with black, or just change to black right around the eat-in-table area? Thanks so much for the help!

[Chris in VA]

Could you paint a clear poly on the chairs so that they wouldn't leave a mark if they bumped into the wall?

[Pretty in Pink]

If the kitchen and dining area are one room then I think it would look odd to have black trim in one part but not the other. I would go with just one color of trim. I would paint the chair rail white and just plan to Magic Eraser that sucker once per week. You could also paint the chairs white, but that's way more trouble than I would go to myself.

[Tammyla]

I'd try a temporary color strip (use paper or what ever tacked up) to see how it looks. A wall paper boarder might be another option to tie everything together.