Blue and Green Shadows: Bedroom Makeover

Long post warning.


When last we saw my bedroom, it looked like this:

I had a white-on-white bedroom for about six years, the centerpiece of which was my beloved Ikea Alvine Kvist duvet cover and shams.  I loved the white look, but I was getting a little bored and wanted some color, so when I moved into my current home I painted my bedroom a sort of dusty medium blue (Sherwin Williams' Silvermist) without a second thought.  However, a few months in I realized that my blue walls and white floral comforter were looking a bit little-girl-bedroom-ish.

Then about a month ago I was looking through Ikea's online catalog, and I found this spread:

I needed it. I fell instantly in love with the tonal color scheme.  I needed those blue and green shadows playing off each other.  I needed the turquoises and teals and mints and aquas and deep, dark, hunter green.  I needed them in my life.

I instantly set about converting my bedroom to a room based on that picture.  Because I'm NUTS about blue and always have been, my house had no shortage of random knick knacks to harvest to use in my bedroom.  I removed everything that wasn't blue or green, and brought in a few blue and green things from around the house.  I changed most of the feel without spending a dime.

For the bedding - the biggest part of the makeover - I ordered this duvet cover and shams set from Amazon.com.  It's a perfect medium jade green (it matches Sherwin Williams' Privilege Green (what a weird name) and it plays with the blue sheets in a really neat way.

I also created a gallery wall above/around the bed, which was sort of accidental.  I love the nude woman on the green background (artist: Matt Manley) and planned to only frame a couple of small posters next to it to balance out its height;  but before I knew it I had created a whole wall of artwork in similar colors to those of the bedroom, and I LOVE the way it turned out.

I exchanged the white Ikea curtains for a set of muted teal sheers that I ordered online.  I hung 4 panels on the window instead of two, for depth and a little more light control.  There's still plenty of light for the plants, but the room isn't flooded in glare all the time - it's nice and moody, and dark at night.

I moved the wooden jali screen from behind my bed's headboard over to the corner, and hung solar string lights from the top of it (the little solar panel hides behind the curtains in the window). I have to say, I didn't think I'd like the lights, but I LOVE them so much.  In front of the screen and below the hanging philodendron is a small Ficus tree in a blue-gray scalloped ceramic planter.

On the other side of the window, next to my dresser, sits a blue Ikea Raskog utility cart.   The top of it is filled with small plants and cuttings, and glass jars.  Lower shelves house random things that I use regularly but which don't really match the room or have a permanent home - my makeup, jars of lotion, some books, and other little things like that.

This giant silver metal tray came from Ikea a million years ag (I forget the name) - and, actually, so did the dresser it's sitting on (I spray painted the handles gold).  Also dresser-top are a green jade lotus incense burner, a small gold picture frame, a Ming Aralia in a teal planter, a couple of blue glass bottles, and, centrally, a blue-green glass vase I scored at Goodwill for $3, with a fake white peony in.

The vanity in my room is all white, and there's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.  But I have stashed lots of blue and green glass items on it - most of them are actually useful and contain little toiletry items like swabs, cotton balls, perfumes, and so on.

On the north wall of the room is my black jewelry cabinet and dressing table,  a small window with a dusky teal sheer curtain on it.  There's also a  Tullsta tub chair from Ikea, with their "Nordvalla" light green cover. 

So that's the room so far.  I love the way it looks, particularly at night when the string lights and the bedside lamp are the only light in the room and everything is all dusky and shadowy.  I don't know that I'm done with it - there could always be more blue and green glass in my life, hehe.  I think the room needs more little pops of gold and/or copper.  We'll see.  It'll be fun to play with until I get it right.

For fun, and to check my work, I matched up nearly everything in my room with my Sherwin Williams paint deck.  The deck is a few years old, so some of the colors are have been replaced/renamed, but they still come up on a google search if you want to see them. Here are the colors I've used in this room:


Blues:
Silvermist (walls)
Rain (sheets)
Quietude (glassware/ceramics)
Tempe Star (Raskog cart and some of the glassware)
Moody Blue (glassware)
Really Teal (curtains)

Greens:
Softened Green (lotus incense holder)
Hunt Club (chair pillow, pillowcases on the bed)
Courtyard (Manley painting background, most of the plants)
Rosemary (glassware)
Comfort Gray  (glassware/ceramics)
Spearmint (Ikea Tullsta chair cover)
Privilege Green (duvet cover and shams)

More Blue Things

I'd been sort of half-assedly keeping an eye out for an affordable, blue rug for my room for years, but never found one that really caught my eye (that wasn't also ridiculously expensive). 

I finally found the right one last weekend at Target, when I wasn't even looking for rugs (isn't that the way it always happens?)  Hooray!  It's this one, if you're curious.

At 5x7', it doesn't cover much of the floor under the bed, but that's fine by me - it covers exactly the areas that I walk on, which is all I needed. 

A worn-looking pattern on a brand-new, fluffy, soft rug is a bit silly, I think, but I love it anyway.  And I adore the colors. 

I don't know how much Daisy understands about cameras and photography, but she sure gets RIGHT in front of me every time I whip it out.  Today, she would like you to know that she has an itch.  Dork dog.

So This Happened.

I had every intention springing a freshly-painted guest bathroom on you today, but alas, instead of painting last night (after weather and traffic and the thing I'm about to share with you kept me from going to do a craft night thing with some buddies last night, argh), I came home to find this:



...Wait, wait, lemme back up.  Remember this pic from the other day?

I'm dyeing the Surya rug that I won a couple of years ago.  Same process as I used for the black wing chair, which came out really well.  That job was fast, easy, and the color has never once rubbed off.

This time, however, instead of Rit dye, I'm using a brand called Jacquard (because a friend gave it to me, so I've been playing with all the colors).  It's meant for protein fibers like wool and silk, and is also supposed to do a great job on nylon and polyester - and this rug is wool and poly.

I'm not sure why the dye is coming out;  I suspect because I just WAY oversaturated it in an effort to make sure it soaked all the way through the fibers.  But anyhow, though I placed a bunch of random furniture on it yesterday while I was at work to keep the animals off of it, just in case, I came home to this:

Daisy was really confused as to what I thought was so funny.  And then she got a bit annoyed with me for taking so many pictures of her (these were the only two that weren't just a total blur).

One no wait, two, THREE dog baths later - because after I washed Daisy, I discovered that Shelly's face was blue, so I washed her, too; and then I washed Raven because even though he's black and I couldn't see any dye, I figured he must be covered, too - and he was - I threw a tarp over the rug and then filled it with furniture and plastic tubs to keep it in place, so that I won't find blue animals in my house again this evening.

I'm going to borrow that carpet cleaner from that friend again this evening, and use it to wash the excess dye out of the rug.

Hopefully this story will have a happy ending.  In the meantime, please laugh at my blue dog.  I bust out laughing every time I look at the pictures, hehe.


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The Right Blue, x2

As I contemplate painting the trim in the guest bathroom (which is what you do while you're sitting around on your ass not getting started), I'm also contemplating repainting the master bathroom walls and ceiling...and possibly changing the color in the guest bath.

This is [part of] the master bath.  The color is lovely.  In fact, I've loved it so much that while I seem to paint every room in the house like every two years, this room has been the same color for nearly eight!  It's a bit too intense a blue for me anymore, though, as I've grown towards softer colors;  and the ceiling and trim and doors are all painted the same color, for a mostly-monochromatic effect.  Which I actually still like, but the paint on the trim and doors is getting pretty grubby, and it's time to freshen the paint anyway.   I figure if I'm going to do that, I may as well update the whole bathroom.

via In the Hushed Hours

I'm thinking something more like this.  A bit more green, and a bit more grey, but still some very soft, muted blue.

This is Benjamin Moore's "Grey Horse"

(For comparison, the current color in the master bath is pretty close to this color  (I mixed it myself, sorry) , and my bedroom is pretty much the same color as Sherwin Williams' "Rainwashed" (also mixed by me).

via Houzz

This is also lovely, but I think it might be a bit too dark.  The source doesn't name the wall color; but I think it's probably pretty close to Sherwin Williams' "Mineral Deposit."

This is my guest bathroom as it stands right now.  I only just did this gray/white thing last Fall, and I'm already bored with it.  It's soft, but it's kinda...blah.  I love the gray in my living room, but in here it's just not doing it for me.  I already have to prime and re-paint the trim and doors in here;  I was thinking I might try a very pale blue in here as well as in the master bathroom.







Meanwhile, I've also been searching for the perfect blue nail polish - in a similar color, actually.   I haven't been able to find one anywhere.  Everything is a bright Tiffany Blue, electric turquoise, or very pale baby blue, and none of them work on me.  I found the right color in a Sally Hansen, but it was all sparkly and glittery - while I love glittery on my toes, my fingernails are so short that glittery polishes just make it look like I have no nails at all.  (I keep them very short for guitar purposes).

So, I tried Finger Paints' "Hue Gotta Be Kidding Me"  (wall paint should have such exciting names).  It's really pretty, but it was SCREAMING! FREAKING! TURQUOISE!

* please excuse all the hastily- and badly-applied nail polish in this post.  I was just basically throwing the stuff at my nails to check out the color.  At least I didn't post pics from last night when I was testing it out on my knee. 

I tried mixing some of it into a bottle of white I had, to lighten it waaaay up...and it was waaaaay too light.  It looked like blue-tinted correction fluid. 

* also please excuse that one horribly-bitten nail.  That's my Throwdown Nail.  I can bite that one all I want, and it keeps me from biting the others!

And finally, I got it just right, with the addition (to the white-based mixture above)  of a bit of a deep teal I had but never wear, to make it darker but not more intense,  and a whole bunch of China Glaze "Nude" to mute the color - a trick I learned mixing the bathroom paint color, as a matter of fact.  You can mute a color by mixing in its opposite - in this case, a light blue muted with what basically amounts to a peach or a pastel orange.   
















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To-Do List

By the way, I'm still working on the craft room, little by little, as well as the mini-couch and plans for re-arranging the living room.   One thing at a time...or, rather, one thing from each room at a time.  I've got a looooong list from which to choose.

In the meantime, here are some cool pictures of blue things from Pinterest.  Guess the relevance. ;)

Sweet Home Style

 

Delight By Design

Apartment Therapy

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Huevos

When life hands you lemons...paint them blue!   :D  Okay, maybe that one's just me.  But in case you hadn't noticed, I'm kind of a fan...

blue stuff in/around my house

Somewhere in my bookmarks and inspiration files is a folder called, "If I Only Had the Balls To Paint the Whole Thing Blue."   In truth, I have a blue room - I have three, in fact:  my master bedroom, master bath, and bedroom closet/dressing room (which I never finished, in case you actually remembered that/were wondering).  But oh, if I only had the balls to do this...

Delight By Design

Anthropologie

from the movie Eat, Pray, Love (those columns!)

An Indian Summer

Hmm.


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