To think no one under 90

[Fucksandflowers]

Has a dado rail!
DH wants one in the living room!
Cream on top red underneath.
🤢
We are in our early 30s...

I have a very modern house so it would look odd but in a period house they can look great. And I am not 90.

Omg yanbu. They are so antwacky!

I think they can look nice, but I don’t think cream and red would like good at all

Our house is very old. We have picture rails.
Try referring to them as dildo rails as my friend thought they were called. Bet he won't want them then,!

we put them in to our previous house, huge victorian rooms with fire places - we did red below and up the chimney breast and cream on the top. it looked awesome!

Did the same with green upstairs.

I miss that house!

I was 28 when I did it.

My old house had one up the hallway. It was built in 1880. We painted below and papered above in a Designers Guild paper. It looked gorgeous!
I wouldn’t put one in if it wasn’t original to the house though.

Cream and red

As Goodidea says, it depends on the age and style of the property. I love period properties and a dado rail or picture rail can look lovely, but it would look very odd is an otherwise ultramodern home.

• Disclaimer: I have dado rails in my (Victorian) house, and I’m in my 30s

I guess it de on the age of the house, not the occupants! If the house is of that era when dados, cornices etc were the thing, it would be a shame not to retain the character of the place (or restore it, if a previous owner had ripped it out).

It depends on the house. I have them in my sitting room, but it’s rather old house and the room is quite big. It suits the style of that room. I certainly wouldn’t put them in a modern house, as they’d look out of place, with modern furniture.

My parents installed them in their 1950s semi when they were in their 60s. They look terrible in my opinion.

Historically dado rails were used in dinning rooms to stop people bashing the chairs of the wall paper.

But unless you have a old house then no they are a 80s fashion that's come and gone.

It depends on your house. If you’re restoring a period house- yes. Modern semi- no.

It’s more to do with the age of the property than the age of the occupants, really.

We have an old house with a dado rail in the dining room. The top is grey, bottom is white. Looks really nice. Dado rail is also white. I wouldn’t put one into a modern house, mind... They’re a nightmare to remove so we just made the best of ours.

It’s the cream and red too that is horrifying.
Ugh.
I grew up with a big dado rail all along every wall in the living room when I was a child with hideous cream wallpaper above and red wallpaper below.
Now DH wants me to relive it!
No. No thank you. Not going to happen.

I said I would consider the rail itself, maybe with a nice pale blue underneath.
Not red.

I think it's more common to have them in the hall and stairs (in older homes) perhaps because of scuffs and marks on lower wall.
Maybe he is hankering for a nice 80s border.

Apologies, I mixed up dado with picture rails. the sitting room has picture rails, as did my lounge, but the dining room had dado rails. They were practical in protecting the paper, but I didn’t like them, so had them removed. I think they were very practical when redecorating was seen as a luxury and paper would have stayed up for years. Be prepared to need your walls skimmed, if you remove them, as the top and bottom walls are unlikely to be plastered to the same depth.

They look good in period houses - I wouldn’t remove one that was there, neither would I remove picture rails in rooms with high ceilings as it can make the dimensions of the room seem odd.

Just to clarify.
We do not have an existing dado rail.
DH wants to put one in.

It’s not a period house either.

We have one (early 40s) but apart from the kitchen which we did before we moved in, our house wasn't been decorated in a very long time. We also have some amazing wallpapers and the previous owners never removed anything, they just painted, papered or tiled over the top.

I just remembered, I have them in the hall too. But I think the suit a hall and the walls before the previous owners used to be covered in Wainscoting (panelling), which they removed. My neighbour still has it and I love it. It’s also very practical. It really went out if fashion, but ironically it’s back in fashion again and a couple of my neighbours have had it redone.

I love dado rails, cornices and ceiling roses. I guess I would be daft to put them in my apartment though? (built in 2000s with low ceilings…)

I used to live in a Victoria terrace and they were there when I moved in and very much suited the house.

However, in every other house I've ever lived in: 30s semi, 90s terrace and the 4 year old one I'm currently in, a dado rail would just look completely out of place and frankly ugly.

And cream and red? Why in the name of all that's holy would you want to paint your walls cream and red?

They should only be there if the house would have had them originally.

Previous owners put one in the hall/staircase/landing of my 1930s house. It doesn't look as bad as it could as the house has a good ceiling height but I'm still tempted to remove them.

Wainscoting—that's the word I was looking for. Thank you S1. I was going to put it in my (large) hallway and up the stairs to keep the walls from looking permanently scuffed. Would it be a bad idea?