It's my opinion that, the less you have going on with the walls, the bigger the room will seem. So I would keep the chair rail, because it does protect the wall from being dinged by chairs...but paint it the same color you paint the walls.

I'd even go so far as to suggest that you paint everything the same color as the walls. Use eggshell finish for the walls, eggshell for the chair rail, semi-gloss for the rest of the trim, and paint the ceiling with a paler tone of the blue. That will expand a not-so-big room more than anything else.

Some of the most sophisticated rooms I've ever seen have done this...it allows the shape of the woodwork to add depth and interest just with highlight and shadow, and puts the real focus on your table, your lighting, and your curtains.

If it were my room, I would take down the wallpaper border, and repaint the upper wall as needed. Then I would paint the lower wall and all the woodwork either white or a soft creamy neutral, and I would put picture molding faux wainscotting below the chair rail.

Here are some examples...

Or if you prefer, you could use beadboard or beadboard wallpaper:

There are lots of beautiful styles.

Ok, so that leads to another question - if I leave the chair rail - how do I end it when it is open to the LR? Brownysmom - same question for you, but about the ceiling - how to you transition to the kitchen ceiling? This is the challenge with these open concepts - but obviously, someone has to have figured out the rules already.

I have a dining room open to the living room with a chair rail in the dining room but not the living room. The chair rail ends at the end of a wall on one side and at a window on the other side. The chair rail is painted the same color as the wall, but in semi-gloss.

Scroll down to Shee's topic where she asked about a valance and shower curtain. In the thread she posted a picture of someone's dining room with just the chair rail and it's BEAUTIFUL!!! The chair rail was painted cream/white and the wall above and below it in a green color.

My vote is to keep the chair rail. It really adds to a room, IMO.

You stop a chair rail by turning it back...your carpenter will understand how to do that. If he doesn't, get another carpenter! :>) That means cutting the last piece on an angle, and then cutting a small piece at a corresponding angle, turning it and tucking it into the end of the last piece, so that the molding pattern "turns back" into the wall.

If your ceiling continues into another room now, then you'll either want to paint the whole thing, or give up the idea of the pale blue...and that's probably the easier choice. Anyone who has read me on the subject before knows I'm dead against plain white ceilings almost all the time...so of course I think an intentional cream color is better...something you can use throughout the open space.

It's called a mitred return. Here it is on crown molding

{{!gwi}}

It's going! I don't know what I was thinking, but when we started talking about the returns - I realized that all I'll I'll have for walls left is an upsidedown L with the bottom of the L being along the window wall, then the length of whatever I define to be the DR. I think that would look strange, so I'm going to remove it.

Thanks for the advice!

I see you have decided, but I was going to also suggest that you get rid of it, since you would have very little wall space left with the chair rail.

As for the woodwork, I think the stained color would be great with the blue that you are planning - I would leave it alone and not paint. Don't worry about being out of date. Lots of homes have stained woodwork, and it will be back "in style" again - those things are always cyclical.

I'm thinking about another of my mother's wonderful remarks..."Sometimes I don't know what I think until I hear what I say."
So just talking it out is often all you need to reveal what you want to do.