My last house had sage and tans - I accented with a dark purple. Bought accent pillows in sage and purple, purple throw, used kitchen accessories with grapes on them. Sage kitchen towels, etc. I also had dark cherry cabinets and really it looked very nice.

You know, I just saw a picture of a room with a similar niche, which was filled with wooden candlesticks. Tall ones, short ones, light wood, dark wood. Singles and pairs. It looked pretty terrific. Even though some of the individual candlesticks were rather small, the fact that they were massed in with so many others made them all work together.

So I think the niche would make a great place to display a collection--baskets, pottery, tole trays--whatever speaks to you. You could do masses of smaller items, like the candlesticks, or highlight a few larger pieces, like handwoven baskets or wooden trays.

Or if you have kids on sports teams, put all their trophies up there.

Or get one really large thing, like a 36" diameter clock and put it on the wall and let it make a statement.

Or find a saying you like and stencil the words on the wall of the niche.

Or paint the niche the same color as the wall and put lots of creamy white pitchers or vases or other pottery up there.

I would paint it green and ignore it.

I think there is a rationale behind painting it green and ignoring it--it kind of creates another focal point, which could take away from the natural one, which is the furniture at the room level.

But if you wanted to put things up there, I would keep them large enough to make a statement, relatively few in number and still paint it out green to match the wall rather than creating a bunch of visual planes. I might feel differently if it were symmetrical, but I have had two clients close up all their asymmetrical niches and put discreet doors on them (painted wall color) for bulk storage. (Both houses were small and lacked storage anyway.)

I agree with Allison, ignore it after painting it the wall color. A friend has the same arrangement in her living room, she has much larger objects up there but I'd rather spend the money on enclosing the area and think it would look much better.

Another vote for paint it green and ignore it tho my first choice would be to enclose it.

I don't need the storage space, but painting it green might be the perfect solution. I had entertained the idea of putting my kids' old rocker up there with a quilt and a couple of big old crockery jars, but it just didn't seem like enough to fill the space.