Styling the Bedroom: Days 8-14

DAY 8: Learn about Color and Gather More Inspiration Photos

Today's assignment urged everyone to learn about all the things that colors show us.  The main lesson was that there are warm colors that are meant to stimulate (red, orange, yellow) and cool colors that are meant to calm (blue, green, purple).  So, what kind of effect do I want in the bedroom?  Definitely something calming, which is tough because I generally gravitate towards warmer colors.

We then learned about the 80/20 rule which is to say that only 20% of your colors should be bold, so your entire room isn't one HUGE bold statement.  The goal is to go for 80% of neutral and 20% bold.

So what colors should I use?  I broke out the handy master palette for ideas.   Everyone know I love yellow, and I naturally thought of a grey/yellow combo (which is trending nowadays) but I really wanted to try something different.  I had a few different ideas:

- Grey/Orange:  Right away, this breaks the rule of staying in your palette, but it's such a pretty combo!

- White/Teal:  Currently, we're rocking this palette in our IKEA duvet cover, so maybe just keep it going?

- Grey/Blue: Then maybe one of each?  But that seemed awfully calm.  Almost Sleeping Beauty inducing calm.

So, then, I thought: palette be damned, what colors do I like (that are something NOT yellow)??  So I opted for a combo of all the ideas: grey, blue, and orange.  Grey and blue will be my primary calming colors, and I'd love to have awesome pops of orange around the room so I don't fall asleep as soon as I walk in.  What do you think?

DAYS 9-11: Clean, Use your Outbox, and Collect Paint Chips

So all weekend, the goal was to clean, toss stuff, and think about colors.  The cleaning was easy.  I hired a housekeeper who started (technically on day 14) so I just cleaned up the clutter and let her do the heavy lifting then.  As for color, I think I'm sticking to my orange/teal idea, but maybe using white instead of grey.  I say this because I really would like to put in bookshelves on either side of the bed, and the shelves I want/can afford at IKEA come in white but not grey.  Yeah, I could paint them, but this project was quickly developing the possibility of being too much for a single mom.  I think I can still use grey a lot, but white is definitely going to have to play.

Once the pre-cleaning clutter got done by me this weekend, and then the pros came in on Wednesday, we went from this:

To this:

Already a marked improvement!

DAY 12: Choose Colors + One Decor Pairing

Again, I'm still on the grey/orange/teal train and have been surfing around for some inspiration.  But this assignment also wanted us to create a pairing.  Meaning, find something that we need functionally and get/make/find one that is also what we need design wise.  For example, they said if you need a box for your TV remotes, but are missing some texture in the room, get a cool woven basket to hold them and kill two birds with one stone. (Note: do not decorate with two dead birds).

So, thinking about my room, and my original list, I need a lot of stuff.  But one thing I've noticed I really enjoy doing is reading a chapter out of a book at night.  In a world of computers, it's nice to snuggle next to your kitty cat after the kids have gone to bed and actually do some for-fun reading.  But to do that, I need a lamp!  I have those tiny yellow lamps that really do bring out some great light, but design-wise, it's not what I'm looking for. So, that's my combo:  user-friend lamp with a design-friendly look!


DAY 13: Pick: Project or Product

 Ok, so what I picked yesterday (the lamps) now moves to the next stage where we decide if want to BUY something or MAKE something.  Ha ha, they obviously don't know me.  I'm going to make something that turns out kinda crappy - huzzah!

Remember that I did get these really cool lamps at a yard sale a while back, so I'm thinking that I might find a way to glam them up a bit, because design-wise, I'm missing something that makes this room elegant and glamorous instead of boring and simply functional.

I think all they will need is a re-finish and a lampshade, but it's not the traditional shade, we've got to go a little old school.  Stay tuned!  

DAY 14: Make a Shopping List and Set your Budget

So, after all the brainstorming, it was time to figure out what I'm going to need to buy and how much it was going to cost me.  Here are some of the ideas I'm thinking:

Bookshelves:  I'd like to frame the bed with bookshelves to really fill in that far wall as well as FINALLY have a place in the house to put books.  Currently, they live in a plastic tub in the garage - classy.

Just an example I pulled off Pinterest from Sage Design

But I'd like to give them some color and do something like this:

 Curtains: I love the look of these bright pop of colors curtains hung high and wide to make the room look bigger, but I'm concerned that a pop of orange will look weird with a white/grey room, or clash with the curtains.  Thoughts?

Could I make this work?

Art:  Over the bed is a perfect place for a mirror that's somewhere in my garage.  It looks something like this one:

Side Tables:  Because I want the bookshelves, it takes away the side table that holds the lamps.  So, I need a thin little side table to put between the bed and the book shelf.  IKEA has one (but too expensive) so I'm thinking Jon could make a couple simple ones for me?  I think that'll be tough with him living in Alabama, so I might have to thrift something or figure this one out. 

Lamps:  The "project" from this past week's assignment.  I've got the base, now need some materials and two lampshades.

Duvet Cover:  Although I love the Malin Blad whatever from IKEA that I've got right now, its brightness might compete with the other colors I want to use.  So I was thinking something like this from Target:

So, assuming I get everything that I'm listing (although I don't think I will, we are looking at the following for cost:

Duvet: $50 from Target
Lamps: Probably about $40 for paint/lampshades
Bookshelves: Around $80 each (IKEA)
Curtains: Two windows, so that's four panels - probably around $40 if I go IKEA/Target
Side Tables: ??  As cheap as $20 for wood/paint or as expensive as $80 for pre-made
Paint for bookshelves: $20

Broken down, that's really only $310 at the most, so let's have a $350 budget and see what we can do!