# Dividing a room to paint with moldings??



## J187 (May 19, 2006)

I am contemplating repainting some walls in my house. I have a pretty open floor plan. My living room far wall extends the width of the house and on one end its the living room for about 2/3 of the wall and the other is the dining area/dining room. If we repaint, I'd like to break the two areas/rooms up with a different color. Obviously, this will look funny if we just stop 2/3 of the way across and change colors. What I am thinking about doing is using some molding up the walls, across the ceiling and down the other wall. Does anyone have any opinions on this? Or any other ideas? Thanks. 

BTW, the opposite wall of the main wall is the opening to the kitchen in the dining area and the other 2/3 accross from the main wall is all open leading to the stairs and hallway w/ bedrooms. I'll enclose a picture


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## Katydid (Jul 10, 2006)

*How about this Idea?*

In my considered opinion (as a color-consultant faux-finish painter) you would not be happy with the moulding (installed vertically?) on the long wall. I expect it would give the place a less than elegant, doll-house effect, and would limit future design choices.
How about a creative paint technique instead. Steal ideas from past segments of t.v. design shows on the HG website or in the books that often accompany those shows. Debbie Travis' Painted House is one of the many good ones.
If you want help to visualize the moulding idea, put some kind of low-tack tape onto the wall where you would put the mouldings. Leave it up a couple of days and live with it to see how it feels and gather opinions from others whose design sense you admire.

Good Luck, Katie


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## J187 (May 19, 2006)

Thanks katie. Opinion noted. 

Others please?


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## RobertF (Jul 8, 2006)

I would frame it out with a simple box frame, maybe two 2x4's deep or so and drywall it. Carry one color to the edge and one comes across and stops but it provides a stopping point. It would also define your dining room from the other room.


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## slickshift (Aug 25, 2005)

IMO those always look bad
The exception would be and "exposed beam" type of separator on the two walls and the ceiling
It still looks a little funny, but is workable

I'd paint the long wall all the same color, and the short DR wall a different color
That would lend an "aura" of a different color to the DR


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## DaveH (Jun 5, 2006)

I had this same problem in my last house. We decided to use two colors that accented eachother while being different. At the point of transition we "seperated" the rooms with furniture and trees in pots at the wall line. It looked fabulous and gave the impression of two seperate rooms..


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## J187 (May 19, 2006)

Hmm, all good suggestions. I am most intrigued at the moment, by the thought of painting the common wall one color and using only the short walls to define the dining area...in my particular application, that may work well. I'm looking into it. Thanks for the great suggestions!


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## handypilot (Jul 18, 2006)

DaveH said:


> I had this same problem in my last house. We decided to use two colors that accented eachother while being different. At the point of transition we "seperated" the rooms with furniture and trees in pots at the wall line. It looked fabulous and gave the impression of two seperate rooms..


I would use Dave's technique, but that's me! In order to get a really good clean line you can use the following technique, because painters tape (of any brand) is bound to bleed through. Especially if you have any texture on the walls.

Paint one room color to the point on the wall where you want to transition to the other color, and paint a little farther to overlap some.
Let the color fully dry!
Lay down a plumb/straight strip of low adhesive painters tape where you would normally to divide the two colors. Laying it over the newly painted color of the one room.
Using the same color you just used for the one room, brush a thin coat of paint on the edge of the painters tape that faces the room your going to paint next. What this does is seal the edge of the painter tape so there is no bleed through with the next color.
Let this tape "sealing" fully dry.
Paint the other room up to the tape, and let the paint dry
When all paint is dry, remove the tape and you'll have a nice straight line with a nice clean/sharp edge!


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## carey314 (Jul 26, 2006)

*Dividing a room to paint with moldings*

I was thinking about doing the same thing. We have one big living room and I wanted to turn about one-third of the room into an office/computer room. The ceilings are high and the other side of the area is fairly far away but I was still wondering if that one piece of molding on one wall, for the purpose of using something to divide the colors, would look funny. You'd probably have to see it but in my case, molding across the ceiling and down the other wall would look funny.

A really cool way to do it would be to fade one color into the other color like the color wheel. The biggest problem with that, I would think, is buying all that paint just to put one little stripe down the wall, then just the slighest color change for the next stripe, and so on until you get to the color of the other wall. I'm not sure I explained that very well. What do you think?


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