Botanical Bedroom

As promised last Wednesday, here is what my parents' bedroom looks like now:

As I mentioned last week, my parents weren't interested in any major changes. They just wanted the room to feel a little more cohesive and restful, without spending a ton of money. To accomplish this goal, we picked up new night stands and textiles, updated old lamps, and repositioned the art. All fairly small and affordable updates but when combined, make for a much calmer and peaceful bedroom.

Here's a side-by-side of the before and after:

This is probably the third or fourth iteration of my design plan. Every time I brought home a fabric swatch, duvet, or pillow scheme for my first few ideas, my mother's reaction was the same: "But it's not green." My mother loves green. She was adamant that we not paint the walls because she loves their colour - and silly me thought that the existing green walls would be enough, allowing us to bring in other colours with the fabrics we used. Not so. The lady of the house wanted green, so green she got. 

I decided to run with the green theme and use the existing wrought iron headboard for inspiration. Leafy, botanical prints abounded after that. The duvet has subtle leaf embroidery. The throw pillows, although a slight departure from my original plan, have green leaves and orangey flowers. The bedside tables have an understated engraved leaf motif, as do the oil-rubbed bronze knobs and curtain rods. Although that sounds like a bevy of botanicals - most of the patterns are really quite faint in person and layer nicely on top of each other.

This is my dad's dresser. He has serious sentimental attachment to this piece, so we left it as is. If I had my way, it would be painted and sporting new oil-rubbed bronze hardware. Alas, it was not meant to be. And like I always say, a room should be a reflection of the people who live there - it needs to make you happy. And this dresser makes my dad happy. Mission accomplished. Some of you may recognize the lamp on top of the dresser - it used to be in my bedroom pre redo! My mom really liked it and put it in here herself, so we kept it as well. I picked up the vase and florals from Home Sense to pull the orangey colour in the pillows across the room. We also decluttered and left out only a few key pieces, including a beautiful photograph of my grandmother when she was young.

This art used to be above the dresser but it was much too small for the space. I like its new position between the dresser and curtains. The curtains are sheers from Home Sense with oil-rubbed bronze grommets and the curtain rods are from Walmart, of all places. 

These side tables are from Ashley and they looked like this when we got them. They're actually kids' nightstands! My parents' bedroom is not very large, so kid-size nightstands were much better proportioned for the room. It was also really difficult to find well-proportioned and affordable nightstands in Halifax. Pretty much everything we found was either way too big, way too expensive ($1000+ each), or way too dark (there are loads of dark wood options to be found, if that's what you need). These aren't my all-time favourite nightstands but I think they work nicely in here. We replaced the bulky childish knobs with classic oil-rubbed bronze knobs from Lee Valley.

The bedside lamps actually belonged to my aunt and uncle, who were planning to get rid of them. My mom took them instead, but they had horribly dated lampshades, so we picked up these modern drum shades from Home Sense for $15 each. I like the juxtaposition of the classic oil-rubbed bronze base (SO MUCH ORB!) and the modern shade.

The bedding is very green, haha. The coverlet and shams are from Quilts, Etc., and the 3 pillows are all Home Sense, as is the throw at the end of the bed. 

Finally, I still need to rehang the art along the right wall, which you can see in a before photo here. It's much too small and too close together right now, but I just didn't have time to get that done before today's post!

So there you have it! A few simple and inexpensive updates that resulted in a much more cohesive and relaxing room. 

This was an interesting project for me. It's not my usual style at all, so I had to constantly challenge myself to think outside the box. I like how it turned out. And my parents do too - which is all that ever really matters in the end.