One Room Challenge Fall 2021 – Weeks 1 & 2

I’m so excited to share that I will be a guest participant in this Fall 2021 season of the One Room Challenge!

What does that mean? It means that I’m choosing a room to fully transform over the course of the next 7 weeks, concluding in a big reveal this November 18th! But don’t worry, I of course won’t keep you in the dark until then. I’ll be sharing plenty of updates along the way.

Meet the Room

For this challenge, we’ll be focusing on the Living Room, which currently looks like this:

This room already has a lot of great features, but none of those wonderful qualities are really shining through in its current state because it’s so bland— it’s just a couple of couches and a tv.

The Design Goal

There are so many design directions we can choose to go – it’s a blank canvas! The design direction we’ve decided on is:

Moody modern vintage, a touch gaudy

Interesting, right? We want the space to feel different from what we would normally and comfortably gravitate toward, so I’ve never designed anything that fits this description before. So this new (for me) design style will be an added challenge.

Speaking of which, get ready for the plot twist…

The Plot Twist

This room is not your traditional 4-walled room. It’s actually part of an open floor plan that shares the space with an open dining room and kitchen, as well as the open stairwell.

Suddenly, our space has grown in size by a LOT.

As much as I’d love to focus solely on the living room area, the space is all kind of one gigantic continuous room that even includes the stairs and upstairs landing. While we’ll mainly be focusing on the living room, the rest of the space plays a big role in the overall living room experience. So we shall be tackling parts of those spaces as well…

Constraints

We are keeping a few items of furniture, which we will have to work into the new aesthetic (or rather, build the aesthetic around): burgundy couch, TV stand, dining set, dining table chandelier, entryway chandelier.

The question that keeps running through my head is:

What colors go with burgundy?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the color burgundy. It’s one of my long-time favorite colors. BUT I’m currently a bit stumped on a burgundy-centered palette. Green seems like it might get Christmas-y. Blue seems like it might get a bit Fourth of July. These holidays are great, but I don’t want people to see a color palette and immediately associate it with any particular theme or holiday.

The Plan

I feel like once I get the palette down, the other items will start falling into the place.

This week we are all about paint and nailing down that color palette. In the spirit of moody modern vintage, I feel like a dark wall paint color is really important. But I’ve never painted a wall a dark color before!

I’ve swatched a number of dark Benjamin Moore paint colors on this wall. How do you pick?

In addition to the dark wall paint colors, I’ve also swatched 2 neutral colors. These will either be used to:
scenario a) offset the dark paint colors
scenario b) be the ONLY paint color, if I chicken out on going with a dark wall paint color

To dip my toe into this dark wall paint concept, I decided to paint a smaller wall in a different room a dark(ish) color. I figured, if I didn’t like it, it would be a lot easier to repaint than one of the large living room walls.

And I’m SO GLAD I did! I am absolutely loving this wall. Right now all the furniture is a state of disarray and somehow a dining chair made it into this room, alongside my dog’s water and food bowl. But are you liking this as much as I am?! I feel like this wall color is making this dining chair look the best it’s every looked. Just imagine if all the dining chairs had a backdrop like this in the dining room.

So, I’m absolutely team moody walls right now.

I’m just not yet sure exactly where to apply this dark color. Do all the walls get painted dark, just some of the walls? Do we paint the ceiling dark, too? Floorboards?

Here We Go!

I’m so nervous and excited! There are a lot of firsts with this project: first time participating in the One Room Challenge, first time creating an art installation, first time attempting to build a table, first time painting a kitchen, first time painting a stairwell, first time decorating a space of this size – the list goes on!

Woohoo! Let’s transform this space!

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More About the One Room Challenge

In case you’re not familiar with it, the ORC is an event that occurs every Fall and Spring since 2011. Every season, designers set out to transform one room over the course of (normally 6, but it’s extended by 2 weeks due to Covid) 8 weeks. They join up in the event to support each other and share ideas:

The One Room challenge will provide participants with a supportive, enthusiastic forum in which to share the process of transforming a room. The ORC is not a competition, but rather a celebration of creativity, inspiration, and original ideas. Welcome!

One Room Challenge Mission Statement

Every Wednesday (for Feature Designers) and Thursday (for Guest Participants, like me) the designers give an update on how they’re progressing, which spectators and participants alike can follow along in the One Room Challenge blog.

To date, over 5,400 rooms have been transformed as part of the One Room Challenge.

The event officially started last week, so consider this my 2 updates in 1!