Fall 2021 One Room Challenge: Week 1 – The Before

Hello! If you’re new around here, two years ago I purchased my first home. It was a fixer up which I lived in and slowly remodeled to make it feel like home. But this year, three months ago to be exact, I moved out of my New England home and moved south to Georgia. I am currently renting while we search for my next home, and given the current market, I am not sure how long that process will be. In the meantime, I am hoping to make my rental feel like home…but on a budget though lol!

So, I decided to sign up for the Fall 2021 One Room Challenge because what better way to challenge myself to design my home than with a group of other participants just like myself learning and designing as we go. Last fall I transformed my dining room into a cozy breakfast nook. This year I will be working on my bedroom. As I mentioned, this is a rental, so I have a much smaller budget and will be focusing on designs that are removable and approved by my landlord.

If you aren’t familiar with ORC, it is an eight week interior design event where a selected group of designers work with brands like Better Homes and Gardens, to design and remodel a room. In addition to the appointed designers, guest participates, like me, can join in the fun and redesign a space for themselves as well. You can learn more about the ORC here.

Before

As you can see from the pictures, I have done nothing but move my furniture from my old house in this room. There is no style, rhyme or reason to anything in the room other than if it fits, it’s here. The room gets good light during the day and I do like the dark wood floors, but other than that there isn’t much happening in this bedroom right now.

Concerns and Limitations

The main design limitation is that this is a rental apartment. Not only am I not allowed to make any permanent changes but this is also temporary so I am not interested in designs that will require an enormous effort. I am looking only make changes that can be easily reversed or can be taken with me when I am leaving.

Secondly, the bedroom is small. The room is only 12’ by 12’ with two windows on the south facing wall. The north facing wall has two doors side by side, one for the closet and the other for the entry. I am hoping to add a fun color to the walls, since that is a renter friendly design improvement, but I also don’t want the space to feel too small with a dark colored wall.

Currently, the only source of light is from the overhead ceiling fan, and the switch is all the way on the other side of the room behind the entry door. Since I cannot change the ceiling fan, it is important that I add some additional and aesthetically pleasing lighting.

Goals

My overall goal is to really elevate this space and create a cozy bedroom with warm earth tones. I would like to warm up the room with an inviting wall color and add some texture to the walls since I cannot make any significant architectural changes. I would like to add varying textures throughout the room with rugs, window treatments, bedding and furniture. These are easy rental friendly changes that can elevate any room. I would also like to add some additional seating, a nice reading nook (or a chair to hold all my unfolded laundry in all honesty) that doesn’t feel too crowded in the small space.

Here are some bedrooms, textures and colors that I find inspiring. I am gravitated towards warm earth colors like taupe and terracotta and varying textures like wood, linen and roman clay walls. Also, I like the clean minimalist look, the cozy beds and wood finishes.

This Week’s Goal

The last time I did this challenge I was overly ambitious about what I could accomplish in a week while working a full-time job. This time around I will be much more realistic. This week I will:

• Decide on paint color and wallpaper (or wall stencil). I brought a few samples home but still haven’t decided on the main colors I will go with.
• I would also like to add some architectural interest to the room. But how does one do that in a rental? That’s the question I will likely ponder for the rest of the week, I have a few ideas that I will investigate and hopefully will be able to update you on next week.

Next week I will share my design plans for this room, so stay tuned! In the meantime, check out the other guest participants and featured designers’ projects here.