Little has been done with the top floor of the house in the three years since it was built and so with the recent departure of a lodger, it was the perfect time to decorate a bedroom. My other half set the brief of modern, clean, light and gave me a budget of £150.00 – which I managed to achieve for only £105.50. As many of you will know, modern is not my usual interior style as I favour more of a classic look or, as my Dad would say, “Downton Abbey” inspired.

My initial thoughts were to go down the route of calm and modern and adopt my default colour of GREY, incorporating a bright colour to create a pop and add some warmth and personality. Grey and yellow work really well together and have gone hand in hand when it comes to interiors for years but I wanted something a little bit different. After running through colours in my head I quickly started to dismiss most choices; blue – too cold, red – done to death, pink – shot down and then I came to orange. Now I love orange as I think it’s one of those colours that has numerous shades and tones, like burnt orange and peach,that can create so many different vibes. However for this project I knew what I wanted and that was a bright citrus, yet classy, orange. I now just needed to find it!

Before

Before

Armed with my iPad I snuggled down into bed with a decaf Yorkshire Gold and began trawling though my regular internet haunts. I finally tracked the cushions down in Dunelm for £8.00 each and a matching throw from Wayfair for £17.99 (Reduced from £52.99). I’ve never made a purchase from Wayfair before and so I was a little apprehensive, but I have to say, the quality is great. With the orange in the bag I was on a roll and turned my attention to the accessories. Now, as I strict rule, I don’t like to mass buy accessories as I think it’s best to collect items that you really love – that way you will always find that special place to put them, else you can end up with a mass of clutter around your home. However with this room being a totally blank canvas I felt it needed a couple of items to add a homely feel without it being too much engineered personality in a guest room. To complete the room I got some simple white lamp shades from B&Q for £5 each to replace to blue shades of the table lamps and decided to stick with the existing grey ceiling shade to maintain a soft lighting to the room.

With the other accessories it called for a trip to everyone’s favourite Swedish megastore – IKEA! This is where I purchased two large frames for my prints and a matching circular mirror, as well as a collection of grey glass bottles/vases. With the frames sourced, my next task was to create the prints to sit within them and so I had previously found inspiration from Pintrest with typography prints. I found numerous prints along the same theme of ‘inhale’ and ‘exhale’ which I loved due to the simplicity of the prints and the large bright backgrounds. The stumbling block however was going to be the printing of them at that size, as I would have to wait for them to be posted out from an online printers (my usual option of staples couldn’t do A1 size). So with my impatience mounting, I grabbed some A1 paper from an old uni stetch book and a trusted sharpie to create my own interpretation. With a clear image in my head and everything I needed loaded into the car, including my little furry helper, Hector the pug, we set off for a weekend of decorating.

With the sun beating through the window, Ariana on the beats, and the bacon muffins eaten, we set about clearing the furniture (and accumulated junk) from the room. Once the room was clear, and with a constant flow of tea, I set about tackling the feature wall solo as my other half, Dave, can’t be trusted with a roller after the office wall painting incident (but that’s another story!). I opted for a silk dulux ‘natural slate’ paint so that the light will bounce off the wall and back into the room to keep it a light space. With the wall complete and carpet cleaned it was time for the dressing of the room or ‘fluffing’ as we call it! With accessories at a minimum in this project it was the more tedious task of picture hanging that we were left with, which let’s face it, nobody likes.

After

After

All in all I have really enjoyed pushing my style to a direction I don’t normally go in my own home, although I do think that manage to use my same key rules of shopping around to get the best things for your budget and don’t be scared of colour. Colour for me is the difference between bland and bold, because let’s face it life is too short to be bland no?