Blog Every Day in July: Day 6, Interior Design

So yesterday I FINALLY finished painting Melissa's old room, and hopefully I will soon be able to move into it and Melissa's Old Room will become Melanie's New Room.  I'm waiting on some pieces of furniture, and I have yet to buy a couple of pieces.  In the meantime, let me share some of my inspirations for the room:

So this is the color that I painted the walls.  It's from Behr's premium plus line and it's called "Parisian Taupe" and it's a really pretty neutral.  It looks a little bit darker in this picture than it does in the daylight.  I'd say with natural lighting, it translates to more of a khaki.  But at night, with indoor lighting, it's a lot closer to the color you see on the screen.  I really wanted a true taupe for the room, because I like that it's kind of in between brown and gray and it's got some warmth to it but it's also a little stony.  You know what I mean?  But when I bought paint samples, the true taupe that I was looking at ("Gallery Taupe" by Behr) was a little too dark, and according to everyone else it was kind of "muddy".  Which is a shame, because it was my favorite of the three swatches.  I wound up picking Parisian Taupe because eventually I am going to move out of this house to be a real person, and my parents will use my room as another guest room.  Since they didn't like the darker taupe, they planned to repaint the room.  Picking this lighter shade means that they don't have to do that, since everyone pretty much agreed that this was a really nice shade for the walls.  And in the long run, I think this was the better choice (even though my heart still yearns for true taupe!!).  This color is much less overwhelming, and much easier to coordinate with a variety of colors.  The other one?  Not so much.

Speaking of coordinating colors, here are my inspirations for accent colors:

I am really loving the combination of coral and turquoise as of lately.  I don't know what it is, but I am determined to make this color scheme work.  It sounds a little weird when you just say the two color names together, but honestly when you look at it, it's not so crazy.  In fact, it's fairly conventional.  Originally I had thought about painting the walls either coral or turquoise, like in the bottom right photo of that collage, but it made more sense to go with a neutral.  I'm not even going to try and get all of my furniture to be these colors.  I'm going for an all-white theme for my furniture.  So far I've bought a white wrought iron headboard, and a white five-drawer chest.  I plan on getting a white desk and two nightstands in either white or an accent color...but that's about it.  I like that white makes several statements: clean, contemporary, simple, elegant, etc.  I think that white furniture with turquoise and coral accents will be very...Melanie.  I like things to be light and bright.  I'm thinking for beddings, going with some sort turquoise comforter (I really like this turquoise marrakech pattern) and sheets, with a ton of throw pillows in coral and white and turquoise.  But first I need to find some more furniture!!

So this is the furniture I have bought so far.  I'm going for a more traditional style of furniture, and obviously I'm going for all white.  I like more vintage-looking pieces that have a bit of character, and are little curvier or loopier.  If that makes any sense.  One of the things that I would like to try and use to tie any other pieces I buy together are the knobs on the five-drawer chest.  You can't really tell from the picture, but they are kind of...crystal?  Like...they are plastic, but they are made to look like big crystals.  I think I can compromise on the type of desk I get (since everything cheap is a little TOO simple for my taste...but I'm really trying to cut corners in cost) by changing the knobs on the drawers to match this chest.  Ditto on the nightstands.  Hopefully this will all look cohesive and put together...instead of...not.

I'm really excited to see how this all turns out!  Now that the room is painted I feel like things are going to move a lot quicker.  I'm definitely dreading the switch from my current room to the new one, and the idea of having to fill in wall space with pictures and stuff like that stresses me out a bit...but so far everything seems to be headed in the right direction.

I'll keep y'all updated on progress as the project continues!