Simple = Sophisticated

This new home needed a fresh look for the master bedroom, and we selected a few beautiful elements to make the space feel grown-up and inviting.

We started with the furniture plan. In this case, we were lucky: There was clearly a wall meant for the bed. Then, to make the scale of the room feel more intimate, we chose a gray-brown for the walls. 

My clients had the side tables, which we covered in tone on tone seersucker. We topped the tables with my favorite small gourd lamps from Visual Comfort.

Simple white linen curtains soften the look of the windows and shutters--perfect for a bedroom. And we added a pop of color with the great rug at the foot of the bed. 

We're working on adding a few more accessories and a throw. I have a few ideas. What would you choose? 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

How to Remodel Your Master Bedroom

I loved this project because we touched every inch of the house, and the master bedroom is one of my favorite spaces. We started with a blank slate, which is always a lot of fun. Here are a few tips from this project you can use to refresh your own bedroom.

Open up the doorways. We increased the width of the opening to the left of the bed because it was a very narrow space going into the now sun room.

Plan your space. When we changed the opening, we also claimed some of the space from a secondary bedroom for a sitting area and master bathroom. The space for the sitting room was originally a sleeping porch when the house was built. It was then converted into a closet, which covered the windows. Our change exposed the windows again. Cheers for natural light!

Build on one thing you love. Our inspiration was the window treatment fabric from Brunschwig & Fils. Pulling a very subtle color from a leaf in the pattern, we decided on the wall color: Benjamin Moore's Woodland White. Then we found this gorgeous Scalamandre geometric pattern in a red-cut velvet for the side chair--so divine!

Layer your bed. We used a light-aqua gingham from Schumacher on the ruffled bed skirt and an upholstery-weight Kravet fabric on the headboard, with contrast welt in the gingham. Bed linens are from Restoration Hardware. I love starting with a fabric with multiple colors so we can pull colors from it to find the next fabric or paint color.

Check back in a few weeks to see new lamps for the bedside tables! I am looking for either a dark blue or a crisp ivory glazed base.

 BEFORE

AFTER: Ahhh...

Get Cozy: Master Bedroom Redo

People often ask designers where to start when they're remodeling or redesigning a room. Sometimes I use a piece of art or a fabric that a client loves, but in the case of this master bedroom, we started with the soft powder blue walls. Blue tends to be a calming color, so a bedroom is the perfect place to use it!

With the help of a local upholsterer, we selected a classic shape for the headboard and then had it covered in two fabrics from Calvin, one for the main body and one for the contrast piping. (TIP: Contrast piping is a great way to add a little interest and tailoring to an upholstered piece. I love it!) 

Custom pieces are the perfect way to get exactly what you want (and they're not as expensive as you might assume). But the challenge is that you and your designer have to decide all of the details. In this case, we thought long and hard about how high to make the headboard. We had plenty of ceiling height and could do just about anything we wanted. The headboard is 66 inches from the floor, a little higher than I normally do them, to move your eye up the bed and be a little more dramatic!

We found great-looking sidetables from Restoration Hardware that followed the classic look, and polished it off with clean ivory-glazed lamps from Visual Comfort. The clients found the rug on a trip to Santa Fe--it was the perfect piece to the design puzzle!

BEFORE: BOR-ing!

AFTER!!!