Can’t see much from those pictures. Turn on all the lights and raise the blinds please. I don’t care for that dark paneling and would treat it like a wall and paint it whatever color you will paint your walls. I guess.

Do the same as what you've done for the kitchen. Right now it looks like basement walls.

IMO cardinal sin or not if the color is not working paint it and if oyu are concerned about the next owner drywall over it so they can discover this lovely feature I am beig sarcastic IMO painted wood can be a huge improvemnt often in a home . I do agree pics are best when taken so that we can see the whole space in much better light.BTW some parquet flooring was not good quality to start and was often the cheap HD way to do DIY flooring.

I’ll try to get a better picture as the sun comes around. I took one with the lights on but because the lights are so awful it looks worse. Please ignore the mess as we are replacing the kitchen so my kitchen is in my dining room

Though honestly that second picture is how it truly looks in the dining room. It’s so dark and depressing

i am a purist and i love REAL wood paneling. i still curse the owners of my house that painted the walnut paneling and built-in in my basement before sale and am trying to figure out how to remove it. anyways… enough about me.

its hard to tell from your photos but the stain does look off/odd. it also looks like a wood/ lake house where i would embrace this with good lighting and decor if the stain looked nice. note that sanding and preparing this to take a new stain will take a lot of work and may not get the results you want, depending on the wood, or may turn out beautiful. if you choose to pickle it or go lighter etc, you need to get into every nook and cranney, to remove the old darker stain, which is going to be a pain. i suggest you do a test patch to see how easily it comes off (use a good quality stripper and sand it) and determine if you are ready to go ahead. otherwise i think painting is in your future.

I love classic MCM homes and touring all types of historic homes and mansions. I have seen many rooms with wood paneling where I would consider it a cardinal sin if someone were to paint the paneling.

This ribbon stripe mahogany . . .

This Frank Lloyd Write example paneled with cypress

or any of the old Colonials or Tudors with raised panel wall coverings

Or this example of Judges paneling that someone on Houzz was considering painting. . .

Others that I wouldn't consider painting:

I wouldn't hesitate for a minute if I wanted to paint your paneling. Just not the same.

A lighter stain would be great; however: it would take a lot of time and effort to do that, due to the prep work involved.

I agree. It just isn’t that special and I detest the amount of light it absorbs. I’m thinking of painting versus staining since I don’t have a ton of time on my hands these days so I think I might go with the grey the rest of our house is. Inspiration picture with very similar wood paneling I have

There was a home restored on the show This Old House where they took the paneling that was like yours, and bleached it. It looked outstanding once it was done. Still kept the original wood, but now much lighter. I would look into that process.

The room is dark and depressing partially because you have blinds over the windows, limiting the amount of light and what may be a nice view outside. Try raising the blinds. I would still paint the walls, even with the blinds raised, just not a fan of the color you have. But before starting a post asking about color, raise the blinds.

Paint white.

Another option to consider is wallpaper. My mother put up grasscloth over her 70's panelling and it looks great. She spent quite a lot of time filling in all the grooves in the panelling with spackle before she wallpapered, though. But might not take more work than prepping and painting it the right way as an earlier poster explained.

Converting that to a light stain that is uniform will be well nigh impossible. First, it may naturally be a dark-toned wood. Second, even if you sanded off all of the finish, it has penetrated unevenly into the pores of the wood and you would likely get blotchiness when re-staining. Third, it would be almost impossible to sand into the grooves uniformly to get rid of all the stain that is in there. It would be easier and cheaper to simply rip it out and put in new paneling than trying to salvage this through some re-staining approach.

In my previous house I had beautiful, 6" wide, clear, solid cedar paneling that had been stained a light color, but decades of use and discoloration from pictures hanging on the wall, and soot from the fireplace caused an unevenness that I couldn't ignore. I knew I couldn't make it look uniform as it must have been when it was new, so I reluctantly painted it an off-white color. I felt bad doing it, but it was an improvement and did lighten and modernize the room. And I recommend you take that approach.

I have not done this myself, but my sister had someone come in to paint her paneling and they used a wall paper liner first, then a paintable wall paper then paint. Turned out looking like a regular wall - could not see the grooves or wood grain at all and they didn't putty all the grooves first. This was for resale, so I cannot attest to how long this lasts or if in time the grooves start to show.

We had ugly dark cheap paneling in our 1972 house. When we updated it in the mid 70’s our painter filled the seams and we used a cream color vinyl wallpaper that looked exactly like grass cloth. It was beautiful and everyone commented on it. It tolerated 3 children and numerous friends and cats and looked perfect when we sold the house in 2001. I am sure there are even better wallpapers out now. There are no reasons for the additional step of paintable wallpaper.

It depends on the look you are going for. You could prime the paneling , making sure to prime the cracks as well. Then paint with the color of your choice. I did this in my last house, and I really liked the look. I liked it better than plan old walls, but as stated it really is what you prefer. Everyone's taste varies!

We had drywall put over ours. It was easier than all the prep that would have been necessary to paint and quite inexpensive. Completely changed the room. Either paint or drywall now while your rooms are already chaotic with renos. You won't regret it. A new room next to a dated room, loses half of it's appeal.

Covering with drywall can be a good option. However, it typically involves re-setting all the electrical boxes (or adding box extensions), and adjusting all the window and door trim to account for the added wall thickness. An alternative is to remove the paneling and replace with drywall of the same thickness.

We had a very rough sawn wains coting paneling in our basement stained about as dark as stain gets. We painted over it and think its a much better look than flat drywall would have been. After the lighting issues are taken care of I think painting would be worth the effort. You can always dry wall later but you can't get the paneling back.