One Room Challenge - Week Three | Decisions
Decisions, decisions, decisions… This is the part that clients tell me give them the most grief. “How could I possibly decide on the ‘the right’ rug for my space out of 600 rugs? How could I possibly make a confident decision?”. This is exactly the reason why we start with layout when we’re planning a design. If you have nothing else but a layout plan for what goes in the room and where it goes, you have a solid start. When making decisions for this specific space, I had parameters to consider. I knew the maximum size of the bed and type, size of the rug, storage unit, and ottomans — these informed my search for the right pieces. If you read the week one blog, you’ll remember we talked about a theme and a moodboard, first. That usually happens after the layout has been decided, however, for the purposes of the One Room Challenge, I started with the moodboard first.
So — we know have our layout sorted and we have our color palette sorted. We will use this information to make our decisions. I asked in a poll on instagram which rug you thought I picked even though I had already selected which rug I was going with. See what had happened was, your girl got caught off guard with “shiny object syndrome” on the Ruggable site. Even with my narrowed down theme and size, I was still caught between 3 selections.
What I didn’t clarify in the poll, however, was that there will also be wallpaper involved (!!!). Yup! This project will be chock full of pattern play — and even though there’s no real rules about pattern play, I still wanted to stay true to my minimal aesthetic and keep things easy-ish on the eyes. That immediately eliminated option one because there was a lot going on with the patterns and the palette that I didn’t want to compete with the wallpaper. Option 2 kept to the palette I originally considered, but something about the shapes didn’t quite vibe for me. That left option 3, my original option and the option I selected.
I then got shiny object syndrome with the wallpaper choices. Although I’m usually quite decisive, I like to exhaust all options when it comes to making design decisions to ensure that I’m confident with my recommendations. When I was looking through the Chasing Paper site, I instantly connected with their ‘Cane and Palm’ print. It was on target with the theme as sugar cane has always been one of my favorite things about Jamaica, and I loved the pink colourway, but I was sure to grab samples of all possible options to make sure that the option I had in mind was the best option for the design.
Whenever possible, I recommend grabbing swatches and samples before making a final decision. I hear too often from clients how things ‘looked different online’ and then they have to go through the return process or get stuck with an item they don’t want. Getting samples and swatches for as many items as possible before purchasing eliminates a lot of the trial and error. Of course, there are some items that don’t offer swatches, but if you can acquire swatches for those that do, you can be sure that you’re making an informed decision. Maximizing your informed decisions makes room for wildcards!
Paint Swatches + Wallpaper
If you’ve been following on Instagram, you know that I’m using about 10 different colors in a mural! Comparing the paint colors to the wallpaper swatch helped us know that we were headed in the right direction,
As I write this, we’re headed into week 4 (ah!). Time to get moving on some action steps in the room. Keep following along on IG to see how it all pans out. Don’t forget to check out the other amazing space in the ORC!
