Transition from one room to another

[bkrahmer]

My wife and I have been discussing how we'd like to finish the main floor, and there's a bit of a problem area that I don't know what to do with. The front door enters the house just about dead center. Stairs go from the entry up to the second floor, and the living room will be on the left and the dining room on the right. I don't necessarily want to have the same finishes in both rooms. Obviously, wainscoting and chair rails won't pose a problem. However, I'm not sure how to put a break in at the door if we want two different colors in the rooms, or do different crown moldings.

One idea we had was to have some kind of molding around the door extend to the ceiling, but I can't remember ever seeing anything like that. Can anybody point me to examples of this, or of other alternatives? Thanks.

[Dragon]

Is your living room and dining room really one big area?

[bkrahmer]

Kinda, but not really. They are separate rooms, other than the fact that they have a semi-open stairway and the entryway in between them. As I said, they share the front wall, with the front door in the middle.

[Dragon]

Well you can certainly trim your front door out so that the trim reaches the ceiling. Raised panels that mirror the look of your wainscot is one option as well as many others and really isn't uncommon at all.

I'm not sure how its going to look with two different colors on either side though...