If you do choose to paint it make sure you sand well then use a stain blocker, followed by an undercoat then the top coats (best spray painted)......a bit of hard work and may not be successful. If all your other furniture is white then you can use this piece as a focal point and dress it up with a large white vase or white framed pictures of varying sizes, you can include a splash of colour with the white to lift the look. You could also buy a piece of white 4-6mm Perspex with beveled edge for the top leaving all other edges as is.

consider very dark walls like navy, dark grey, rich caramel or deep rust colours with eaves and fascias white, downpipes same as walls and gutters a mid range colour to match the dark walls (btw some new paints are supposed to have heat reflecting qualities even in the darker colours)

Hello Of course it depends on the 'mood' you wish to create in your living spaces Colour is returning to home decorating now to add interest to neutral spaces I wonder if you would be brave enough to try a beautiful pastel turquoise to your spaces??? Like this I especially like the last one as it has grey in it

Hi MaxCC, Your 'artwork' is called a wall niche. As far as I know, they were originally used to display religious icons, such as The Virgin Mary. I'm not religious but I do admit that I have a special love for wall niches. I have used them twice in homes that I've built as a place to display my 'Lamplighter' Lladro, so that he is on display to guest. The niches were always placed just inside the front entrance as yours is. Sadly I don't have any photos to show you, as we have just moved house and everything is still in storage. My suggestion, to help you with how to display the object that you will put into your niche, would be to keep the wall itself neutral but paint the niche in a metallic paint. Your want the object on display to be the item of greatest interest and the metallic paint [Resene have some wonderful colours to chose from] will help to draw your eye to that space.