Chair Rail Ideas

Traditionally, chair rails were put up on the plaster walls of the house to provide them protection from any sort of damage from the chairs around in the room. Usually, the surface below any chair rail is covered with wood panels for this reason. Today, chair rails are used for the purpose of interior decoration. It helps to divide a large wall into different section. The material that is commonly used for making chair rails are fiberboard, wood, vinyl or metal. The chair rail ideas discussed here can be used on any of these material.

How to Install Chair Rail

First of all, take the measurements of the wall properly where you want to install the chair rail. Mark on the wall the height at which you wish to mount the chair rail. The standard chair rail height is in the range of 28 to 36 inches from the floor. However, this rule can be changed depending upon your choice and the height of the wall. Cut the moldings of the rails according to the measurements with both its ends at 90°. If you make any mistake in the measurement then it is possible that gaps are formed in between two rails. At any end of the railings where another piece has to be joined, should be cut at 45° with the help of a miter box. This is required particularly for the corners of the room. Trim all the railings with the help of a coping saw. Now install each of the railings on the wall with the help of nails. Lastly, use the nail set to sink all the nails that you have fixed on the chair rails.

Here are two chair rail installation tips that we want to share with you. Keep the length of the rail equal to the length of the wall in order to get minimum number of joints. If the room is too lengthy to be covered by one railing, then join the two railings together.

Chair Rail Styles

Chair rail adds an extraordinary effect to the walls and your room. Chair rail ideas can be made interesting simply by using the paint in the right way. As the wall gets divided, you can paint the two parts with two different colors, or paint one part and put wallpaper on the other. The chair rail strip in between the colors helps to make the changeover look beautiful. It is good particularly when the chair rail is installed at one-third height of the wall.

If the construction of the wall has a lot of intricacies and curves on it, attention can be drawn on those curves by painting the chair rails with the right choice of color. Keep the entire background wall of one color and paint the chair rail with a contrast color. In this case, if you wish you can just stain the chair rail as well. This is also suitable if your wall decorations include a number of art objects.

When you have a bold wall color, then a neutral colored chair rail looks nice on it. Chair rails blend well with wall frames and other moldings. Therefore, in a small room it can serve as a border of the picture frames. In this way, the wall surface get highlighted.

The multi levels of the rails can be painted with multiple colors of paint to get a Victorian style. For this, the choice of colors for the narrow bands of the rail should be of darker shades with more emphasis on golden browns. If you want to have a rustic effect, then earth tones combined with natural wood finish will work the best. Another interesting chair rail style is to install it at a height slightly above the usual one, say at the height of the eye level. In this case, keep the width of the rail slightly more so that it can acts as a shelf to put different pictures for decoration.

Hope you liked the chair rail ideas that are given in this article. Just keep one thing in mind, that the chair rail style that you choose for your home should be such that it merges well with the interior designing of the house. It is not at all essential to install chair rails only inside a room. Instead of hand rails, you can put up chair rails on the wall of your staircase too. If you are installing chair rails on the kitchen wall, they should be put up at the top of the kitchen counter.