Dado rails, are they out of date? thinking of putting one up the stairs

'Mole Breath' caught my interest...

One of the F&B colours is called 'Calamine'. Yes. Interesting.

Just out of interest, a Farrow and Ball tester pot is £4.80 ish. A Dulux one 53p. I'm not at all sure the cost is worth it. Dulux paint is very good.

I saw a dado rail on one of those house selling/decorating programmes and immediately thought how dated it looked, so I guess it all depends on where it is and what colours are used. My hall and landing are so typically 1970's square and boring looking that I felt a detail of some kind would break it up a bit, and I think [and hope] that it works.

In my living room I have a dado rail. It's a late Victorian miner's house, so the rail is appropriate. Otherwise, I had the whole place done with emulsion on top of lining paper. It badly needs re-painting! Oh the upheaval! My DS2 - the family 'expert' because he worked with a decorator during Uni holidays - recommends F&B because in the long run, he found he used less of it than Dulux or Crown and the colours are interesting.

I am no expert on what's in or not and had always thought dado rails to look smart but were to some degree a little old fashioned.

However it's not what other people think is it, and you are not going to sell your house so if it's your thing then put them in.

When I make changes to my home I only do what suits me don't consider if someone might not like it.

I think that one of the reasons why I went with dado rails in the hall/landing was to cover up the damage done to the plaster by removing the Laura Ashley floral border that had been there before, so it's always a good idea [as has been advised on here]to consider problems caused by removing a decorative feature that is currently fashionable. A good piece of advice I heard years ago [strangely enough in the awful Changing Rooms programme] was, if you're going with something currently fashionable, just do one room so that when it goes out of fashion you only have one room to change. I find that the dado rail in my hall/landing adds interest to a house that has, in general, square, boring boxy rooms and that putting the pictures above the dado rail frames them even more, especially if the colour in the pictures is picked up in the colour in the bottom half of the room. But I am biased about it I suppose .

I've seen lots of very chic houses in magazines where dado rails feature. I like them, especially if skirting boards, the dado rails and ceilings are painted a brilliant white. I am about to have my hall and stairs decorated and am going for a slate grey paint below the dado rail with a pale, silvery grey above it. I had my then husband put a dado rail in the hall and up the dog-leg staircase when we moved to this house in the '80s. I think they add character to a room, but I am very fond of houses with period features.

Dado rails in my opinion are so last decade (or more) - if your house is large and ceilings are high then I can understand the need to break up the monotony of large expanses of walls but if it isn't, then why make a small space even smaller? I agree with Jings on this one - add interest to walls by putting up pictures and/or photographs. But really it is just a matter of personal preference at the end of the day - one man's meat is another man's poison after all..... On the other hand, of course, is it 30 years or more since they were last "the in thing"? if so, then yes put them up if you want to be the height of current fashion!!!!

bikergran I have had dado rails in some houses, but wouldn't now, they collect dust and are a pain on the stairs when it comes to carrying stuff up and down.

This site

www.notonthehighstreet.com/art/wall-stickers?page=1

has pages and pages of what is now the most common form of wall decoration - big stickers that you can place where you like. there are pages and pages of them, so go to the next pages. They may not be to you taste but other sites do them. I was actually trying to find a lovely one that I saw for a staircase, but I couldn't find it. Your colours sound very modern, I'm not sure a dado rail would work but we got around it by having a stripy stair carpet, which draws the eye. I do remember that one of the colourways did have a lime green stripe in it, and black.

Not harsh at all, kitty. I was just responding to the OP

We put in dado rails in nineties /nought ids and took down in daughter's room last year. We had to have the whole room re plastered . I would like to take down the one on stairs hall and landing as it does look dated, but don't want to spend loads on plastering .

yes I up cycled our old tatty sofa that the cats had plucked to death....luckily the extra sofa covers that they sell in Ikea fit our suite, I did originally buy black to go with the lime green décor....everyone kept say "have you got anew suite"? lol now that the cats have departed this world I have whipped the black ones off and replaced with cream 9£50 for the sofa and one chair cover so good buy) thing is young GS is started to "move" around.... maybe cream wasn't such a good choice, but the other colours were soooooo expensive, I think one iof the colures chair covers was about £145! but as mine were just the raw cotton colour that's why there cheaper, certainly brightens the room up.

phoenix now that is something to think about as It could always be painted over without any hassle..

We had a rail up the stairs hall and landings of a Victorian house we lived in. Suited the house very well and we put one of the very expensive analglypta papers with a small pattern on below the rail - painted that Egyptian sand which is a lovely understated soft yellow and cream paint above. We had a lovely shade of red carpet - not harsh colour at all - red carpet is hard to pick as some colours are just too harsh - and I managed to get a lovely toning fabric to make a curtain. The hall always looked beautifully bright and sunny and an amazing number of visitors remarked on how welcoming the house always looked. In fact one couple so loved it all they repeated it in their house!
Go with what you think will suit your lifestyle and not make things too difficult to keep looking nice. The rail certainly makes it very possible to repaint just that section if it gets marked but I would say get any rail put on correctly and also any paper underneath - a cheap embossed type will not look good at all as sometimes the pattern goes flat when hung. The Analglypta papers although very expensive - I paid around £15 a roll twenty years ago - it is a great quality and very strong - needs cutting as cannot be torn at all. Good luck biker whatever you choose and I hope you are happy with the result.

I think that's a bit harsh merlot. Not everyone has the same taste.

Lots of our furniture is old but I don't want it upcycling. We have a dado rail in our hall with a striped paper under and emulsion above. IMO it suits our (quite large) hall which contains a georgian desk and chair, a Victorian grandfather clock and a rustic chest of drawers we have mirrors and prints in gold frames. We also have a dado rail on the stairs as the wall is enormous. This wall is painted a deep red, to match the ceiling, below the dado and a warm cream above.

DD3 is very good at upcycling furniture and it looks great but isn't our style at all.

I suppose it depends on whether you want your house to appear dated in a very short time. The OP asks if dado rails are out of date? The answer is Yes. The same goes for stencilled borders and (even worse) rolls of patterned border.

If someone advised me to do what I want and who cares if others like it I'd think they're the ones who actually don't care.

Look at the rest of your home and work out what is definitely your style. Think of ways of merging your character with modern tastes. Dated furniture can easily be upcyled but once you have stuck a dado rail on a long staircase wall you'll be stuck with it.

What I have done is emulsion in two colours, using masking tape along the line that a rail would be positioned.
Alternatively you could use a roll of border, there are some modern patterns available these days.

Choose to do whatever you want, who cares whether others like it!

Compromise, do a stencil where a dado rail would go? There are some brilliant kits around, and some of them are very easy to do. I did a vine leaf one in a previous house.

(Sorry if someone else had already suggested this)

I like emulsions walls because it's easy....excepting for very high stairwells. I think dado rails are dated, but that's just me. My home is pretty much matching but not highly modern, and lots of it 'pre loved'

lots of thoughts and ideas ! thanks all... will deff tak a look at the F & B range..

I have always had chairs and sofas that do not match, never owned a three piece suite in my life. Firstly because we couldn't afford one but mainly because we have always bought our furniture second hand at junk shops or at auction.

As far as dado rails are concerned, who cares about fashion. It is your house, Biker, do what you like.

I've been trying to get DH to agree to dado rail up our staircase, but can't convince him. It's a 1930s terrace with a very narrow steep staircase. Because it's so narrow, the lowest 2 or 3 feet get scuffed all the time and look terrible now (it's six years since we last painted that wall). Painting the whole thing is a major job because the ceilings are so high, so for practical reasons I'd like to have paper above the dado and probably paint below. That way, the scuffed part could be regularly repainted without having to touch the higher part.

I slightly envy those of you who have walls that are smooth enough to just be emulsioned. Most of the walls in our rented house are so patched up with polyfiller that the only realistic option open to us when we moved in (apart from paying for replastering of a house that we don't own) was to use anaglypta below the emulsion, to help disguise some of the irregularities. Luckily, we've lived here long enough now for me not to notice the uneven walls most of the time, but we've just had visitors for the weekend so I've become a bit more aware of it again. Time to get some paint charts and start planning the next face-lift, I think!

I will admit to having painted over a very figured wall paper in our dining room that is F&B colour is string - I like that. I needed something to go with curtains.

Right. I' m sending for some F and B tester pots!