This is the first week of the Spring 2023 One Room Challenge. This is my third time doing the ORC and I’m so excited to share this project with you!
We moved into our new house in the summer of last year, and for the most part, we’ve been trying to live in the spaces for a while before doing any major updates. A big part of it was wanting to see what works and doesn’t work for our day-to-day, as well as not wanting to rush in to any major renovations. I admit to having some ideas percolating in my brain pretty early – like this bathroom wanting to be blue. The space here is great, with a big shower and a separate tub, and everything was in pretty solid working condition. It was just very gray. But again, we were waiting on updating things!
You can see above a little bit of detail tile in the tub and shower – a range of blue and brown tones in small glass tiles. That’s probably where a lot of the ideas sparked from. When doing a design, I like to identify what items are staying just as much as what’s going – it helps me pick out what updates might be saves versus splurges, and I think having a few constraints helps with my creativity. In this case, the tile was staying – close up it’s gray with some taupe mixed in, so it would match with most possible directions we’d pick, and also, it’s solid and functional, so it didn’t feel worth the cost to add all that demo and installation of new tile.
You can see the tile here peeking out from behind some of our selections for this room.
I wanted to go with a deep rich blue for the walls in this room, and landed on Gemini Season by Hound Paint. I feel like this might have actually been one of the harder decisions for me to make, because I had such a specific idea of what I wanted the color to be. A couple other decisions cascaded from that first design choice. With dark walls, I wanted to lighten up the cabinetry, and Cinnamon Sticks by Hound Paint looks like the perfect medium taupe/mushroom color to warm up the space while brightening the cabinetry.The floral wallpaper, this color scheme, and, let’s be honest, my general tendency towards Victorian, Gothic Revival, generally jewel-toned and ornate décor, helped decide the direction of this room as a deep blue Victorian-inspired space.
There are even more details I can’t wait to share in the coming weeks – you can probably see a sneak peek of a few of them in the mockup above. Also, I want to thank my sister for taking the CAD scan of our bathroom and transforming it digitally based on my design plan – check her out at A. Ruth Interiors! I hope you follow along as we make our primary bathroom a moody blue Victorian-inspired retreat.
The Jeweled Nest 