Love your DR. I am doing my DR dark gray as well and I have a fabric similar to the last one, which I like alot. Mine has more gold. I want to fine my fabric first then pick the paint. I have four windows so its expensive. I can't make a mistake. I have a couple of fabric samples that might work for you. I will take pictures for you when I have a little free time.

Here are some pictures. 1980's wallpaper will be gone soon.

homeagain,
I like that last fabric you posted and I think it wil go very well with your room and chairs.

I prefer the striped ones, they have the sheen you want, the colors are great and they work well plus the stripes give it that extra oomph. I like the light blue in them. They're muted colors so they work very well. I think the room deserves a drapery treatment with a sheen.

Stripes for sure!!!!! I love striped drapes, they always bring a certain polish to a room. Be sure to post some pics when you are done!

caminnc, thanks for the photos. I really like the one with the gold stripe. Do you know the manufacturer? Which one did you choose for your space???

The striped fabric I posted was perfect in my space. Not only did it look great with the walls but the olive stripe exactly matched the color of the chair fabric.

I went yesterday to purchase it and they only had 5 yards and are not re-stocking it. I searched online last night and couldn't find anything is this color combo. I found plenty of blue/brown or blue/cream stripes but not a blue and olive separated with a small ivory stripe.

Is anyone familiar with this fabric? Its actually a faux silk. Feels like taffeta???

I'm going to call the store tomorrow and see if another clerk might be more helpful. The one I talked to yesterday was not. At the very least I can try to find the manufacturer and item #.

Homeagain, perhaps you are not meant to have it. I was going to post the other day, and then got side-tracked, but I don't think you will love it when you have yards of it hanging in the room. The green and blue don't relate to the wall color that well, imo, and while in a small swatch might seem workable, I don't think it will work in a large quantity.

I love your wall color, and the chairs work well enough. Would you ever consider re-upholstering them? If so, I wouldn't try to match the drapery to the chairs.

However, if you have no plans to reupholster in the near future, I think you should concentrate on doing a grey tone or a silk white. If you choose a pattern and it has some green in it, great.

The one other color that you might consider, if you are open to it, would be a plum or deep purple. That could be lovely with the wall color, and also work with the green in the chairs. Not sure the rug would work, because we haven't seen a closeup of it, but you did say you were open to changing that.

i don't know where your sample came from, but i have seen a similar fabric at calico corner....

i agree with les tho...i think to make your gray walls stand out, a pretty ivory drape might do best in your room... don't think the olive/blue drapes will feature the wallcolor as you might want. i would probably focus on a tone on tone pattern, or a fabric that really has alot of texture... something in a cream similar to the rubus silk fabrics at calico which consists of lots of horizontal folds-very stunning and textured.

i just went to the cc site to jog my memory of the rubus name and they also have a silk: aveda in colors pelle or cognac which might look nice irl and have alittle more interest than just a plain silk...haven't seen these in person.
and there's the silk: tyne celadon which is more along the lines of your stripes, but not as blue...i had a sample of this in the summer, but it was too green for what i wanted.
just some ideas... :)

Les, thanks for chiming in. I always read your posts with interest and you are always right on, which is disappointing because I really love this fabric!! Actually the dining room furniture is more than 12 years old and I am not in love with it anymore. My taste have changed and I would prefer something more casual, but we paid a lot of money for it and convincng DH to let me sell it on Craig's list probably wouldn't go over too well just now. However, I would probably sell it before investing more money in it. Here' a close-up of the rug...

without flash

with flash

And the chair fabric...

I think the reason I like the striped fabric so much is that I'm currently in love with this slate blue color and want to add it to all rooms to some degree. It occurred to me that the drapes in my master bedroom were somewhat similar so I brought them down to try out. These drape are a blue/brown striped but a much more muted hue of each..

Anyway it gave me an idea of how the color combo works in the room.

busybee. I loved the aveda in cognac but since I need 24 yards, $60 per yard is a little (alot) out of my league.

I plan to paint the study (across from the DR) BM Duxbury Gray and I would like to use the same drape in both rooms.

I'm not against a plain ivory silk, I just wanted something with some oomph~

Homeagain, I don't know who the manufacturer is but I can go by the fabric store and check if you would like me to. I really like the fabrics with more sheen. I think these dark rooms need every bit of bling they can get. I have been working on my sons house and have not even started taking down the wallpaper. Started thinking about using dark grey after Texashottie painted her dining room black a couple of years ago. Seems like something always comes up. I have some pinkish plum and burgundy colors in my rug that I will pick up in accesories but I wanted to go with lighter gray drapes. I may also paint the ceiling the same color as the drapes. I will see how much the white wainscoating lightens up the room first. I also want to go to a some drapery stores to see what they have to offer. My DD uses a lady that makes the most beautiful drapes. She does this as a profession so I am hoping to get her to make them for me if she is not too busy. I can also mail you a sample of this fabric. Let me know. Your DR looks beautiful, let us know what you do and good luck!

I own the stripe fabric and used it in my master bedroom. Could mine be a different colorway because mine is tanish brown, thin gold stripe and a seaglass green? It's a Richloom fabric and again, mine was called Mysore Spa Blue.I purchased it a JoAnns a few years ago and think there might be another color option. I am not lovin this stripe in your FABULOUS black dining room. Your color choice is so daring and I think the drapes need to be a WOW too. Homeagain,did you mention that you can sew? Why don't you make a wide (18") striped fabric out of 2 different colors of silk? This way, you can play with the color combinations that will work best in your current room.

caminnc, is the fabric a silk or a heavier fabric? I think I want something with sheen also. The fabric store where I got the samples had a gorgeous dark purple silk that I thought would be great in the room but my DD wasn't convinced. It's nice to feel somewhat vindicated with a couple of suggestions in that direction.

ratherbesewing. Thank you! That is exactly it. The brown seems more olivey in my room. I found this enlargement on a website that states the color is true...

I'm scared now because so many of you are warning me away from it. My initial thought was to do ivory silk until it was finished and it just seemed to me that the room called out for something more dramatic.

I am not an accomplished seamstress although I can sew well enough to make simple panels. I would be afraid to attempt anything more complicated than sewing fabric and backing together.

I discovered this blog around the time I was painting and love her black room but this isn't really the direction I wanted to go. Scroll to the end to see her striped silk drapes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Design Dump

A little mash-up of your pictures. I quite like the stripe as the color shows from your swatch, but not as much from the large fabric picture you posted. I think you can find something you like even better. For such a fabulous room, I would want something more exciting than plain cream, but that's just me.

{{!gwi}}

forhgtv. Why didn't I think to do that??? You are right, the swatch that I got locally looks completely different than the online photo. I like my swatch against the wall but not the photo from above. I also don't love my swatch with the rug. IRL the chair fabric doesn't seem to have so much gold in it either.

Why does this have to be so hard?????

I guess I'll keep looking.

If this were your room, what would you use?

I think you need a fabric that either doesn't have a pattern or one that has a geometric pattern. I like your idea of using a stripe, but I also like what looks like a charcoal silk swatch on your wall. Unfortunately, it's really hard to see without being in the room...just look at how different the two samples of the stripe look on the monitor...LOL!

You can do your own mash-ups. I just use the Windows Paint program that came with my PC. I can't do anything fancy like the Photoshop wizards that post here can do, but I find if I take photos of all of my choices and play around with them in Paint, I can at least get a feel for the direction I like. Plus, when you are doing it for yourself, you know how close the picture on the monitor is to real life.

Homeagain, it's silk. I would want them lined.

Homeagain, I love your black dining room so much I can't resist playing, even though I'm one who always need help pulling it together. After trying to choose a favorite from the swatches, though, I finally realized that all those very pretty calm muted patterns and textured solids were sort of falling flat for me, even though I like them all. Perhaps it's that the black can be pulled toward somber or rich? If it were mine, I'd start trying out something a little edgier (and I'm not an edgy person :). I'm imagining, for instance, art with a lot of white background and modern energetic design in bright zippy colors. Or maybe dark but again bringing in some liveliness. Strong contrasts and colors but in very limited amounts. The curtain pattern could do the same thing, or the curtains could back up other accents in a deep rich fabric, like Les suggested, even maybe a mostly black pattern to settle those back and focus attention on table and art instead.

BTW, if you just chose what you really loved, and it turned out it didn't really go with the chairs you don't, might that eventually help open up the possibility of selling them?

First of all, I need to tell you that I admire you so much for being gutsy with that wall color! It is beautiful. What isn't working so much for me in the room is the rug...do you absolutely need a rug? I don't have one in our DR & have sliders on the chair feet & it works great.

I keep going back to that sort of apple green or even your striped swatch just to add pizzazz!! I also think the plum color Les mentioned would be very pretty & might blend with the rug & compliment the chair. But YOU have to like it & live with it every day, so go with something that makes you happy.

I broke every rule in our living room, using a floral Ralph Lauren style SHOWER CURTAIN in our living room for curtains....the color was perfect, I loved the print, and I even have them hanging just below the window will instead of to the floor because I like the wall showing there and have two chairs & a round table in front of the windows. I hung them with black metal clips placed where each shower hook button hole was placed.

So, you can do what you want...even a geometric could work tying in both the paint & the chairs. The chairs are subtle so they don't seem to make a big statement in the room. Could you post your color swatches again w/o the rug?

Hi all,

Thanks for continuing to play with me. I'm taking some of your advice and posting a photo board without the rug. I'm really not a brave person when it comes to decorating and the "black" dining room is really out of character for me. My home is very boring in other aspects, hence my desire to have the same drapes in both the dining room and the study across the hall, which limits things some as the dining room is black and the study will be a blue/green/gray. Both rooms currently have that same brown/cream/gold rug also. When I first started on this decorating journey is was with the intention of ivory drapes. But while at the store looking for a sample I came across these blue/gray ones which I really liked with the wall color but not the chair and rug. (You can see both the ivory and the blue in the photo below.) Then I started looking for rugs and found the one pictured here, however I decided as much as I like the color of the bluish drapes I didn't like the pattern that competed with the chair pattern. Sooooo, when I found the stripe I thought, EXACTLY and I still really like it. I'm going to try to get back to the fabric store and buy 1 yard just to live with for a few days. Otherwise, I think I may just have to go with the ivory or an ivory stripe like cami's above so that it will work in both rooms.

I'll keep looking at fabric in my spare time though. Hopefully something else will catch my attention AND be in my price range....

Love the Striped Fabric

I'm back again. I purchased one yard of the blue/green striped fabric to get a better idea if it would work in my room. Of course Les and those of you who said it wouldn't work were right and I didn't want you to be!! The small sample while looking cool (IMO) against the wall, looks completely different when it's much larger. It doesn't relate well with the wall color as much as I'd hoped on a larger scale. It actually looks better in the pic than IRL.

So back to shopping and mostly online as we don't have a lot to choose from locally. I've ordered swatches of the following fabrics and been playing around with them in paint thanks to advice above.

Does any of these work?

Something like this? (6" repeat)

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}

The 3rd one with the green seems good. Can you paste it in with your chairs and rug?