Dining Room Rehab: Finding an Inspiration Point

Back in September I wrote a post  with an idea board for the dining room. The room needed an injection of personality, and I thought the direction I wanted to take was warm, jewel tones and amber glass. I posted the mood board, and not too long after an inspiration photo of a dining room that had the same look I was going for.



Then I started brainstorming how I could create this look in our room. Something just wasn't jiving, and bringing in more saturated colors was just making the room look gaudy. Around Christmas I brought in lots of red, greens and golds in the decorations as a trial room for the colors I would be adding to the room, and I hated it. Like made me uncomfortable in the room kind of hate. Weird, right?

I talked to Lover about it, and decided that the paint and curtains in the room were all wrong and I would have to start over. That's me, always throwing out the baby with the bath water. Apparently there is a reason why I am not yet a mother. :-) He encouraged me to think about it a little more, before I started tearing apart what I had already accomplished. Then I remembered that I already had my inspiration piece for this room, my Spanish China!



So I took a super simple elementary approach to the room. I literally walked around the room, holding the plate up to the different elements in the room, and decided if they worked or not. Here the plate is on the table, and it worked. I held it up to the wall color, and it worked. The paint color is the color of mill on the plate, and the pretty scrollwork. Then I held it up to the curtains. Instantly, I realized that the curtains were fine, but the curtain rod completely clashed. So, I painted it. :-)  Now the rod is the color of the leaves around the little blue flowers.

I decided I needed a strict color palette of caramel, dusty blue, warm cream (think almost butter), and deep browns. Then I went through the room and removed everysingle thing from every shelf and piled it on the table. Next I worked on one area at a time, finding ways to incorporate the color scheme into each area. For this shelf, I needed a shot of blue to tie it in.



You can see it again in these sconces. Dark browns? Check. Warm cream? Check. A touch of blue? Check.

The bookshelf in the corner was the hardest to work into the color scheme. It is a mountain of dark wood, so things had to be added in very carefully to make it seem cohesive. It took me forever to figure out what to do, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I hauled out the rest of my Spanish china, and arranged it throughout the shelves.



The basket at the top holds the dinner plates. The two blue boxes hold the soup bowls and the rest of the coffee cups. The other little bits are displayed, and I love that they are out where I can enjoy them every day!

I love this chunky cream frame, and the print in it is one that I bought on my trip to Paris. Again, it has all the colors in my palette.



And in the last corner we have the dresser I refinished, with a cream napkin on top, a dark pedestal bowl holding pinecones and my blue mirrors. Just what the doctor ordered for this dark corner.



So there you have it. One room's progression from disjointed and inharmonious, to warm, welcoming and relaxing. Tomorrow I'll show you the whole room all put together. It's gorgeous. :-) See ya tomorrow!