A Stunning Rental Dining Room Reveal (My Favorite Makeover…Ever!)

Our Rental Dining Room | Before & After

Before diving into all the details of this dining room makeover, let’s start with a quick before and after, shall we?

Below are shots of our rental dining room taken the day we moved in and then again before moving out. While living in this home, this dining room was our primary spot for family dinners, game nights with friends, neighborhood parties, birthday celebrations, and so much more. This space really was the gem at the center of our home.

Video Tour

If you’d like to see a full video before and after of this dining room makeover, you can watch the short room tour video below. (Video not loading for you? You can watch it here.) 

The Walls

Without a doubt, the biggest (and most costly and time consuming) endeavor in this dining room makeover was the walls. With a traditional chair rail 1/3 of the way up the wall, I knew at very first glance that a paint+wallpaper combination was going up in here. But this room is both tall and large, making it my most ambitious wall project to date.

Priano Wallpaper

Wallpaper

I have looooooong loved Serena & Lily’s Priano Wallpaper and have been pining to use it in a home. But its steep cost (and at the time, lack of a peel-and-stick wallpaper option) kept me from ever using it. I knew in my gut this paper would be stunning in this room. But despite my honest attempts at finding a cheaper paper I loved just as much, I couldn’t. So after doing some calculations and waiting for a sale, I ultimately decided to splurge.

I outline the entire process of wallpapering the upper walls here: Wallpapering a Whole Room Versus an Accent Wall | What I Learned. Much of what I share in that post remained accurate until the end: budget- and effort-wise (both going up and coming back down!), this wallpaper was a bigger investment than I usually make in our rentals.

That said, I don’t regret it for a second. Stylistically, the paper was a home run and without a doubt, is what “makes” this space so special.

Curious to see if/how this wallpaper eventually came down prior to our move out? I show the process HERE!

Paint

The before pictures may give you the impression that I started with all white walls. And I did…sort of. In reality, I started with a very yellowy-vanilla room from top to bottom. Every single surface (i.e., ceilings, chair rail, trim, walls) were painted the same monochromatic yellow-beige color. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really realize it until the wallpaper went up.

The wallpaper is bright white (as is some of our dining room furniture); and it became abundantly clear that not only did the lower 1/3 of the wall need to be painted, but so did all the molding. Whoa – what was already a big undertaking became much more so.

I painted all of the trim (ceiling, chair rail, baseboards, window/door frames) and doors bright white with my favorite trim and door paint.

I then painted the lower 1/3 of the wall Denim by Sherwin Williams, which turned out to be quite a lucky gamble. I’ve used this blue across three different homes and love it for it’s perfect cross between navy and royal blue hues. It (quite conveniently!) also turned out to be a stunningly perfect match to the brighter blue in the wallpaper, creating a combination that looked far more intentional than it really was!

In the end, the paint and wallpaper in this room was a huge undertaking in time and costs. But it was so worth it because the walls are absolutely the star of the show in this dining room makeover!

Window Treatments

With the walls completely freshened up, I next turned my attention to the large expanse of windows across the back of the room. Removing the vertical blinds was priority #1. I then replaced them with some easy-to-install bamboo shades and tassel-trimmed white curtains (that we’ve had for ages).

See More: Installing Your Own Blinds or Shades | It’s Easier Than You Think!

I absolutely adore the texture that bamboo shades bring to a space, but these three shades represent one of my only regrets in this room.

1. I wish I had matched the shades to the dark table. Between the floors, piano, dark table, and the shades, there are a few too many different browns in the space.
2. Bamboo shades are light filtering, not light blocking; and this room got a lot of light during certain times of day (see below). While great for privacy, I perhaps should have considered something more opaque for these windows.

All in all though, this shade+draperies combination was a significant improvement over the vertical blinds we started with!

Bamboo Shades | Striped Rug

The Lighting

Before even moving in, I knew we’d be swapping out the brass chandelier that was already hanging in the room. Not only was it incredibly dated, but it gave off precious little light for such a large space.

6-Light Chandelier

Thankfully, finding affordable light fixtures is pretty easy these days; and this 6-light black chandelier was a significant upgrade in both style and ambiance. It also served as a connecting element throughout the the rest of the house, as the adjoining kitchen and bathroom had coordinating fixtures as well!

See More: What You Need To Know About Changing Light Fixtures In Your Rental

The Furnishings

No dining room is complete without…furniture! And the various pieces in this space really came together to create an ensemble that worked beautifully without being overly matchy.

Dining Table & Chairs

Our round solid wood dining table is a piece we invested in years ago, and I still love (almost) more than anything else in our home. But we’ve definately gone through a few sets of chairs in the time since we bought it.

This time around, Greg really wanted chairs that were sturdy and had cushions; and I wanted them white. It turns out – that’s a pretty hard combination to find!

After an exhaustive search, I ultimately scored this set of solid wood chairs at a local thrift store for $90. But I then spent as much time refinishing them as I did wallpapering+painting the entire room. Refinishing dining chairs is not for the faint of heart; but in the end, they turned out to be quite the stunning complement to our table!

Step-By-Step Tutorial: How to Paint Dining Chairs (& Get Professional Results!)

The Rug

The dining room table and chairs sit atop a tone-on-tone striped rug that I picked out in conjunction with the wallpaper. I’ve long used Target’s outdoor rugs under our table, and I just knew that the geometric stripe paired with the floral wallpaper would be a stunning combination. And in fact, second only to the wallpaper, it’s the rug that adds the most visual interest to the space.

See More: A Rug Under the Kitchen Table | Yes, Even With Messy Kids!

Dish Storage

We store all of our dishes and serving pieces in two, non-coordinating furniture items.

The first is this china cabinet that I refinished the last time we lived in NC 10+ years ago (I then added the pretty blue paper to the back a few years ago). Although it wasn’t planned at all, the blue poplin textured paper on the open shelving looked quite lovely against the floral wallpaper on the wall and coordinated with the built-ins bookcases in the next room over.

Inside this traditional hutch is all of our “everyday” dishes, as well as baskets for our napkins and placemats.

Striped Napkins | Vinyl Placemats

Over in the corner is the only item we bought (and since kept!) while living in Okinawa, Japan. This cabinet holds all of our china and crystal and takes up a bit larger of a footprint than it appears. In home after home, we’ve struggled to find a place for this cabinet, but it fits and looks so lovely in this far corner. In fact, the cabinet with the scallop mirror above (a total whim purchase from HomeGoods because I knew it would look so good with the cabinet!) turned out to be one of my very favorite displays in the entire home.

The Piano

Speaking of fitting tricky items, the piano is another peice that we’re never quite sure where it will land. As luck would have it, this dining room nook turned out to be the exact right size to fit the piano (lucky indeed because there was literally no where else for it to go!)

While having the piano in the dining room wasn’t quite my first choice (so so tempting for the kids during dinner!), it helped fill up the room and looked nice with the artwork and floors too.

Without a doubt, this is the one room of the house that garnered the most attention whenever guests came over. And for good reason – compared to how this room “usually” looks (remember, every house in our neighborhood is identical) this dining room makeover is nothing short of jaw-dropping (fancy expensive wallpaper has that effect!)

But what I love the most about this room is that for the very first time, I feel like I (finally!) nailed my personal style (it only took me 10 homes worth of trial and error!) This room has elements that are familiar and traditional and safe, yet others that are whimsical and fun and modern. There is enough color and pattern to feel fresh and vibrant, but not so much that it’s loud or overwhelming. And never before have we been able to blend our existing possessions (i.e., furniture) with some new choices (i.e., wallpaper, rug) so cohesively.

You better bet I’ll be using this room as a reference for years to come!