We have a dinning room that is dark and has a chair rail with paper below it and sponge painting above it. We want to remove the wall paper and repaint the room. We are just wondering if we should leave the chair rail up and paint two different colors above and below or leave the chair rail down and paint the walls all one color. Are chair rails out of date?

Not on allot of the home design shows I watch on TV ( HGTV)

Chair rails do serve a good function. If they are an original part of the construction of your home, then I would suggest leaving them where they are and doing anything that you would like to do concerning decoration around or up from and below them while leaving them in place.

I agree with Fr_Chuck, I see them a lot on the home shows on TV. If you're worried about resale value or what's "in" maybe you should check out a few open houses one Sunday in your community. You could pick out some new construction homes as well as a few "dated" homes and compare. Attending open houses are a good way to keep a finger on the pulse of your local real estate market. :-) I also agree with Clough... if it looks good leave it. All trim is expensive these days and I don't ever remove anything that I can salvage.

Chair rails today are pretty much a style feature more than a functional feature. If the look pleases you then keep, I would.

We have a pretty contemporary style in our house, and did a 2-color split on our walls with a chair rail dividing. The trick is to make it a simple and thin, low-profile molding.

Our base and crown are both 3 1/4, but the chair rail is just 1 1/2. It makes it look light and airy, not heavy and architectural. (In fact, I think the molding we bought was actually listed as a "mullion.")

We have remodeled our master bedroom and guest bedroom using a half-round chair molding. We painted two shades of color (the lower third being a darker shade of the same color) and the upper two-thirds being a lighter shade.
After placing a white chair mold on the line between the two wall colors, you get a very "Elite" and classy look.
Chair molding is very "IN"