In my last post, thoughtful Gentle Reader Shirley encouraged me to paint the radiator in my dining room:

I hope you don’t mind me suggesting you also paint the radiator in the same colour [as the walls] so it doesn’t stand out so much.

Then Paul Clark weighed in with this:

If you look at the design of the steam register, it is meant to be highlighted as it gives the room character. In my opinion, to paint it the same as the wall would only serve to point out your disapproval of this fixture….I even went to the point of painting a steam register with brass paint (clear coat, as a carrier with actual bits of brass as the pigment) to make it stand out as it was meant to be.

Here’s the thing: I agree with both of these comments. In part.

How is this possible, you might be thinking, since these points of view seemingly conflict? (Or you might not be thinking anything; you might just be skimming this post because you’re annoyed I haven’t posted in 5 days, which I totally understand and apologize for.)

The answer is this:

I do think I should paint the radiator, but in a metallic radiator color. While that might highlight the fixture in some ways, I believe that overall, in the context of the room, its impact will be minimized.

Let’s back up a second. Most people’s first impulse is to hide a radiator. Some homes are equipped with metal radiator covers (especially homes from the 20s and 30s, I’ve noticed).

And there’s a fortune to be made by companies that manufacture tasteful wooden radiator covers (these are from the aptly named Wooden Radiator Cabinet Co., which several clients rave about).

And some people get very clever indeed, fashioning shelves and skirts and other things to disguise their radiators. I actually think this tailored skirt at right is pretty tasteful.

But if you’ve decided NOT to cover your radiators, what color do you paint them?

Many people stick with the room’s trim color. That’s what the previous (or previous previous) owners of our house did. When we moved in, I neglected to specify what color the radiators should be painted, so they didn’t paint them anything. Therefore, our radiators are varying shades of old, crusty, yellowing once-white paint, as in our daughter’s room, below.

(*I* didn’t paint them because I want to hold out and do option 3, below, but anyway…)

Painting radiators the trim color DOES highlight them, but in kind of a lazy way. It looks especially odd if the room’s trim is light and the walls are medium-to-dark. As in our dining room.

Option 2 is to paint the radiators the wall color. Sometimes this can be a better solution, if you just want the radiators to vanish; I actually think it looks ok in the room below. For some reason, though, it makes my teeth itch to see radiators painted in flat paint.

Option 3, and the one I like best, is to paint the radiator its own metallic color, so it looks like a radiator again. Doing this acknowledges that you’re not trying to HIDE the radiator…

…but the metallic color you choose – from a light silver to a dark bronze – should be the same value as the walls so that it minimizes the color contrast. When your eye scans the room as a whole, the idea is that it WON’T alight on the radiator. Because no matter how attractive the radiator is, you didn’t intend it to be your focal point, did you?

(Mind you, this option is so ubiquitous that I can’t even find a good room picture for you!) But I’ve bought a darkish bronze color paint for the dining room radiator,

and when I finally get around to Ruthie’s radiator, I’ll use silver.

What do you do with YOUR radiators, Gentle Readers?

Thanks to Fixer-Upper, The Wooden Radiator Cabinet Co., xJavierx’s Flickr photostream, Bungalow 23, and Cast Iron Radiators for the pictures that aren’t mine.

Annie Elliott – aka bossy color – is an interior decorator and design blogger in Washington, D.C. She has been quoted in publications from The Washington Post to Real Simple and is considered an expert on color, residential space planning, and telling people what to do in the nicest way possible.