Mumsnet verdict on "feature walls"

[neveronsunday]

I want to paint our family room.

It's big with lots of doors / windows.

I want to paint it yellow but worry it might be too much. DH suggested one wall but I fear this may look naff.

What say you?

Have you had a go at this?

It (and Mumsnet) really helped me when I was trying to decide what colour to do my living room.

Pick the room the most like yours, make the furniture etc the right colour then play with the colour of the walls.

I've used Dorset Cream in a SW facing room, and i love the way the colour changes throughout the day. The only thing is that, after dark, with artifical lights, it does go quite dark, but during daylight, particularly evening sun, it positively glows.

Go for a slighly greeny yellow (like Lancaster) if you've got a north or east facing room, but a warmer one in a west facing room. If you're south facing, go with the one you like best

As for the mumsnet verdict on feature walls - I think they're passé. Lovely house on the market in our village, and EVERY room has a feature wall, and they really jar. I think a complementary wall in a different shade of the same colour can work, but go with the ideas above of painting it all in one colour first and then seeing what it looks like.

Mine's North West.

I'm screwed

Hmm, haven't considered north west because that's the one aspect on our house with no windows!!! I reckon you need to go for the slightly warmer tones (as you'll get late evening sun in the winter) but keep it light as you'll have longer periods of the year without direct sunlight.

The F&B website has some really good advice on how to cope with different aspects here

I love that fabric and also the Dorset Cream. As long as the dorset cream and yellow of the fabric matched in real life, I'd go yellow on all the walls.

In have one and think it works really well as we have a lounge/ diner so it helps define re space.

The space even.

Also I'm a great believer in making my home nice to my taste rather than someone else's.

That's not to say that I don't look for inspiration/ ideas from others I just don't really care about being on trend, mainly because I'd never get it right

I actually like a feature wall. I have a feature chimney breast (because I couldn't afford to paper the whole room to be honest). I will almost certainly only paper one end of the kitchen diner given my preferred paper is £60 a roll (Sandberg Waldemar if you're interested). I also love yellow, especially with grey. Our feature bit is Sanderson Summer Tree in Linden, the rest of the room was a sort of yellow cream already and I painted the floorboards grey and bought new grey covers for our ikea sofas. Grey rugs and white woodwork (as well as a nice cream woodburner and a slate hearth) and it's all coordinated without being matchy matchy. Of course right now it's covered in crap, so just looks like a pig sty.

In DD's room she has two walls in a bright paper and then the rest of the room in a neutral to coordinate. I loves it. I'm planning a feature wall in my loft room too. I'm obviously a bit passé. what about feature doors in kitchens? Cos I'm planning those too...

never do you have the colour chart from f&b? They send it for free.

I like them too.
as long as they tie in properly with the rest of the room and aren't just some random wall done differently.

I love them! I'm a massive wallpaper fan, but rarely like whole room wallpapered so they work perfectly for me.

We have a 'feature' wall, but its the one behind the sofa. Room painted off white, wall behind the sofa is slate grey, covered in photoframes.

Just to throw a curve ball.

I don't like them. Why not paint it in a colour you love and then get a huge framed painting?

So few paintings I like. So many wallpapers I love! I think if you have a lot of wall, it's quite tricky to paper an entire room without it feeling closed in. We won't have much wall in our new kitchen (touch wood) so I may paper all available space. But our living room is narrow and long, so I think papering all the walls would make it feel even narrower. Wallpaper also good for hiding crazing in plaster, of which we have a lot ;)

I like wallpaper in a big room but do like all the walls done. But if you love it you have to live with it. We viewed 30 houses last year at least 25 with feature walls!

I love yellow and grey. Have you seen Fired Earth Indian Yellow? See if you can get a tester pot... I don't think screen representation does it justice.

Painted feature walls = fine
Wallpaper feature walls (esp massive flowery patterns) = LAME

And grey looks great (though think it will date quite quickly)

Pinterest can be useful for ideas.

I just realised why I went down the whole feature wall thing. The room is an L shaped extension with RSJ pillars & different ceiling heights. At the moment it blends into the ceiling but the minute I use colour there is a pillar which turns into ceiling so I'd either have a join or coloured sections of my ceiling iyswim.

It's one of those things I never noticed when buying the house but is really irritating.