We have a plate rail in our dining room.

A photo from our final walk through before purchasing our house.

I consistently struggle with what to do with the plate rail.  Should I put plates on it? Pictures? Nothing?  It goes around the entire room like a skinny stripe at eye level, and while it looks pretty, it makes decorating awkward.   Furniture needs to be just the right height, otherwise it looks incredibly misplaced.

Currently, I have a smattering of odds and ends on the plate rail: some tea cups and saucers around one side of the room, which is way more country than my typical style, and a little collection of photos and a pretty platter on the other side above the piano.

But when I saw this post over at Little Green Notebook, I wondered if it might offer some inspiration:

Picture rails are hung a bit higher (usually near the top of the wall) than plate rails, and then the pictures are hung from the rail.  The picture above shows a slightly lower picture rail, almost the same height as my plate rail!  As soon as I saw it, I thought to myself, “Finally! something that is similar!”

I’m not sure if I would actually hang pictures from our plate rail, but I like the idea of a collection of frames at different heights.

Or, I could hang photos just above the plate rail, like in this photo.  I like how this is very clean and simple, not cluttered or fussy.

Or a more punchy dining room with a similar idea.

I think all of these options are much more interesting than the typical row of plates I’ve seen in plate rail photos online.

To me, these always look like a parade of plates or accessories.  It starts to look tacky and cluttered.

Now that I have a few more ideas and I look back at our dining room, I’m reminded (yet again!) of how much I want to paint that room!  The forrest green makes the room feel like a cave at night, and while the golden yellow is nice and cozy, we have that color in abundance elsewhere in the house.  I think it will end up being something a bit lighter – either an ivory, or a pale gray green/blue.

Question for the crowd: Do you have an architectural features in your home that have stumped you?  The plate rail has always been difficult for me, what about you?

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