Taking the Lead On Decorating

I'll be honest, I'm a little anxious writing this post. I'm not even close to being an expert at decorating. In fact, it's one of those things that is really scary for me. I see all of these perfectly designed rooms in magazines and on other blogs and I just get paralyzed. So my disclaimer for today's post is this: This is just an explanation of the steps I took to make some decorating decisions in one room of our home. They may not work for everyone, they may not be deemed "correct" in the design world, but they have worked for me so far.

The pinkish beige walls in our master bedroom are driving me crazy. I've been starring at them for over two years trying to decide what color to paint them. I've gone from beige to gray to purple to off white to blue. But one thing is for sure, the pink tone has got to go. We have bare picture hooks hanging on the walls where the previous owner's decor once hung. We have a wood dresser, a wooden bed, and two wooden nightstands that all blend in with the beige carpet and wood trim. To top off the monotony, our duvet cover is beige with a few hints of color. Blah. 

I'm motivated to change things up and make this room a relaxing oasis for the Mister and I. To get started, I looked to Google and Pinterest to get some direction. Most places I visited talked about choosing some words to capture how you want the space to feel and then choosing decor that fit those words. Once you have your words, you can pick a "lead" piece - a piece that all other items in the room will relate to. 

So, let's talk about feelings. I tried to picture my ideal bedroom space and I came up with a handful of words that came to mind. Then I visited Pinterest and pinned some photos of bedrooms that I really loved. I went back through those pins and wrote down any words that came to mind to describe them. I ended up with the following list:

Real
Pretty
Cozy
Comfortable
Relaxing
Calm
Styled
Patterned
Romantic
Clean
Quiet

Some of those words are pretty close to one another like relaxing and calm but there is a slight difference between the two in my mind. My goal was to narrow my list down to three main words for our room. I chose calm and romantic right off the bat. Our bedroom is the place we go to sleep, to recover from our day, to find peace. Having a calm space is very important. It's also the one place in our house that is really just for us. When we have guests, they frequent every other room in our home. But our bedroom is our own private sanctuary, so romantic is necessary too. 

Then I had three words left that I really couldn't decide on: cozy, comfortable, and relaxing. No matter how I thought about it, I couldn't pick just one. So I went back to Pinterest and looked at those rooms I loved and marked which of those three words I would use for each room. Comfortable came up with the most results, so it got added as my third word.

Our master bedroom (and everything that is brought into it) will be:

Calm - Romantic - Comfortable

That's all good and stuff, but how does that help me decorate?

This is where choosing a lead piece comes in to play. Take a look at this room and see if you can figure out what the lead piece is:

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It's the curtains. See how the curtains are the most colorful item in the room and everything else that is in the room is pulled from the curtains?

The lead piece could be fabric, artwork, a rug - anything. So I started browsing some fabric websites to see what caught my eye. I didn't necessarily have a color scheme in mind when I started, but I knew it had to revolve around one particular item.

After our wedding, I chose to have my bouquet preserved. I paid a bunch of money to do that and it's been sitting in our basement for almost two years! I know for a fact that I want these flowers on the wall of our bedroom, so the color scheme has got to work with them somehow. 

If you look at my master bedroom pinterest board (click here), you can see how varied my preferences are. I pinned fabric, pillows, bedding, various rooms, etc and there are some stark differences. There are also some commonalities though too. I really like the idea of the orchid color in my bouquet being an accent in the room. It's too bright to be a main color (based on my three words) but it's a fun pop of color. I wanted to pull in some soothing greens and blues as well. All that being said, I finally decided on this pillow as my lead piece.

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The pillow pulls in the bright purple and the darker purple as well as some greens and light and dark blues. The colors are calming, the wispy flowers are romantic, and the pillow itself looks soft and comfortable.

This decision literally took me weeks to make. I'm kind of exhausted. I've vowed to stop looking for lead pieces and pulling up various color schemes online because as soon as I do, I think, "Hmm, this might work..." and the process starts all over. The funny thing is though, in the end, I come back to my pillow. I guess that's a good sign!

So what's next? Excellent question! Now that I have a lead piece and a color scheme and some words to describe how I want the room to feel, it sounds like it's time to start looking at bringing some patterns and textures in and then picking the paint color for the walls... I may need to consult back with Google first. But I feel confident moving forward that this room will end up being exactly what I want it to be. 

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