A Fun Before and After

This fun little before and after comes courtesy of my parents.  My sweet mom has had the exact same linens, room color, and furniture for over 25 years. {Go Mom!}  This was not going to be a total gutting and redo - just changing some colors, soft furnishings, rearranging the furniture, and a few odds and ends.  The things we had to work around: furniture {bed, tv chest, nightstands - even though I think we will eventually change out my mom's nightstand with a skirted table or similar, and two dressers}, and bold flower artwork over the bed.

To be completely honest this room initially posed a challenge for me.  We were working with so many bold, dark, saturated colors and that is not usually my M.O.  I do not shy away from a challenge, however, so it was like working a puzzle figuring out how to make the different aspects work and result in a finished product my parents and I both loved.

What I ended up doing was looking at the artwork and focusing on the colors that stood out that I liked - which tended to be the more greenish blue colors.  Fabric and pattern always come first for me, and the rest of the room just gets built around it.  The last thing chosen was the paint color, Benjamin Moore Titanium.

Funny story but at the time I did this room I actually had three different jobs using the same color in a Master Bedroom, two Dining Rooms, and a nursery :).  Its a wonderful warm gray with a great saturation with a warm undertone - which I hands down prefer to a "blue" undertone.

99% of my clients originally want "blue" or gray walls and, while I love the color blue AND love blue rooms...for me, I just don't usually lean blue in the undertone.  Blue so easily turns purple and that just won't do.  I personally feel more drawn to, and more comfortable in, rooms with warmer undertones.  Most of the time, if these clients let me have my way on it - ha! - we end up with rooms that suggest the color they were seeking but yet still feel inviting and comfortable.

I really enjoy a good before and after and, what makes this one a favorite of mine, is that so much of the room was original... we just spruced it up a bit.  You CAN come back from all those fabulous 1990's decisions!  You aren't stuck there!!! ;)

Enjoy!

Before:

After:

This somewhat odd angle shows how we repurposed the chest that the TV used to sit on to my dad's nightstand and moved the long dresser to the wall opposite of the bed, which better fits the scale of the TV.  We plan on finding a good comfortable chair for that bare corner to the right of the dresser: