One Room Challenge - Week One | The Concept
It all begins with an idea. Sounds cliche, but it’s true. This room has basically remained untouched since about 2011-ish. My sister left for college, my mom went rogue with a random paint selection and beaucoup trips to Home Goods, and the rest (as they say) is history. Well, at least the cohesion of this room was history. Before my sister left for college, the room was painted a deep lilac with a hand drawn mural in black and silver that she had freestyled one day after school. The room screamed moody teenager, but it was cohesive. Now it doesn’t know what it wants to be. I’m glad to give it a job.
Over the next 6-8 weeks, I will be demonstrating a very similar process that I go through with my clients in taking a room from start to finish. This week, concept will be the focus. For clients, this part of this process would be done during the discovery call where I gain an understanding of the needs of the room. Since I’m technically the client here, I’ll tell you the purpose:
THE WHY
Sagan and August love their Mimi. They visit her almost every other weekend and stay for 1-2 nights. When they visit they stay in this room. Sagan (4) sleeps in the twin bed and August (2) sleeps in a pack and play. Recently, we decided that since they LOVE going there and this room isn’t doing anything else, it really could/should be their room.
You wouldn’t know it by the looks of this room, but my mom loves color. Her living room is bright orange and another room in this house is pink yet somehow, this room ended up grey. The room has great bones and doesn’t need too much fixing, but it’s a little drab and, as you can probably see, it just needs more direction. Most of the decor in this room landed here after being rejected from another room. Besides the bed and the dresser, nothing actually belongs here.
THE WHAT
My mom was born and raised in Jamaica, W.I.. She came here when she was about 26 and had me a few years later. My sister and I were raised with Jamaican pride and we love our cultural roots. When I had initially thought about how I wanted this room to feel, the color yellow immediately came to mind. Now… if you’ve seen my home or have been following me on Instagram for a while, you know neutral is my jam, but for this room, yellow just felt right. The other color that came to mind was green. I love green, so that didn’t surprise me; however, soon enough, I realized that those 2 colors were 2/3 of the Jamaican flag. The ancestors have spoken.
When I envision this room, I don’t see it being an immediately recognizable iteration of the Jamaican flag as I’ll be expanding the palette to include many other colors. When advising clients, I usually recommend staying away from literal themes and instead using themes to guide the journey of the space. Although I want the space to feel tropical and Jamaica inspired, I don’t want it to look like it’s attending a costume party as the flag itself. Typically, I advise using 3-5 colors in a color palette — personally, I prefer a 5 or more color palette. Throughout these next 6-8 weeks, you’ll see how I marry the inspiration and color palette to capture the desired vision.
THE HOW
I don’t want to give away too much, but I will say that there will be some hand-painted wallpaper by me (you know I love to freestyle paint on the wall), there will also be a mural by my good friend Asha aka @thepinkpainther, and I may even build or hack a thing or two (or three).
In the meantime, follow along on my Instagram stories. I’ll be sharing the process and take you along as we plan out the Kings’ Palace at Mimi’s!
