Welcome to Week Six of the Fall 2024 One Room Challenge! In case you’re new here, I’m an interior designer based in Great Falls, Virginia, and since 2022, while concurrently transforming my clients’ homes, I’ve also been transforming one room at a time in my own home, and documenting the process on my blog and social media for the One Room Challenge. The ORC is a bi-annual event, where every spring and fall, designers, home bloggers and DIY’ers make over a room in 8 weeks. It’s not a competition, as there is no winner, but it is a super-fun, supportive online challenge that really works to inspire a person to get a space completed in a short amount of time! And for those who just want to follow along, it’s also super fun and informative to keep up with the weekly progress, and see all of the “Reveals” on Week Eight!! I highly recommend you check out all of the other participants here.
For this One Room Challenge, I’m transforming our previously bland and uninspiring Primary Bedroom and Sitting Room into a “Romantic Retreat”, full of colors, textures, patterns, and lots of good vibes! In Week One I showed you the Before Photos, along with the inspiration for the Romantic Retreat, in Week Two I documented the Renovations we’ve done to the room, in Week Three I shared how I chose to try out a new paint trend called “Double Drenching” for all the walls and trim in the two rooms, Week Four I revealed the installation of the Wallpaper Mural in the sitting room, and last week – Week Five– I showed you my process for styling a bookshelf. This week, I’ll be sharing details for the Romantic Retreat Lighting and Window Treatments, and I’m so excited about how installing these elements have really started to make the room feel finished!
Romantic Retreat Lighting in the Bedroom
In order to appreciate all of the new lighting I’ve installed, let’s take a look at where we started:
When we moved in, there was literally no lighting in the Primary bedroom, other than one switch that was wired to a wall outlet so that you can turn on a table lamp from the wall. There was a very dated ceiling fan, but it had no light. We like sleeping with a ceiling fan, so when we first moved in, we swapped out the old one with this Hunter 52″ Allison Fan, and it’s been a great purchase. It works well, has multiple speeds, a remote control, and looks stylish with the white blades, gold finish, and globe light. When we painted the bedroom a few weeks ago, I also added this ceiling medallion, which I think finishes it off so nicely, especially with the ceiling painted in this lovely pale aqua from Sherwin Williams called Glimmer.
But the ceiling fan light alone in the room, still wasn’t enough. I love the look of sconces next to a bed, and decided early on that I wanted to install a pair that were dimmable and fully articulating so that my husband and I could use them as reading lamps. Since our bed is a sort of wingback style, I looked for sconces that would protrude from the walls far enough for the light to clear the sides of the bed. I found these Gold Plug-in Sconces on Amazon, that were a total bargain ($59 for a pair!), and I liked that they were fully positionable, and had a cool, mid-century vibe to them. The quality is not stellar – we had to send back the first set because one of the switches was broken – but since my contractor hard-wired them into the wall, they actually look much more high-end than they are, and with dimmable bulbs, are working great.
In case you haven’t noticed yet – my style in general, and particularly in this bedroom – is very eclectic. There are influences of classical, Hollywood Regency, and MCM styles throughout the bedroom and sitting room, and that’s just the way I like it. Mixing styles gives rooms a layered, timeless look that makes them much more interesting to the eye than design that strictly sticks to one style and time period. And in keeping with this eclectic, maximalist, style, I decided to add another set of sconces above the fireplace. I thought it would be fun to use a sconce that had a shade, so that I could incorporate some more color and pattern on that side of the room, and I found this set, which are very transitional. They look somewhat classic – but with a touch of modern.
In real life, the gold tone of these sconces is not as antiqued as the photo, which works well for my needs. The shades are a natural linen look, which could look great in a lot of instances, but I had big plans to add color and pattern to them! I wanted to use the same fabric and trim for the lampshades as I did for the Roman Shades on the Sitting Room windows, so I reached out to my workroom, One Stop Sew Shop, to see what kind of lampshades they could make. She sent me a few options, but I loved this pleated style because they are actually like lampshade “slipcovers” – they just slide over the existing shade – giving one the option to use the original shades or the slipcovers!
And here they are installed above my fireplace!
Romantic Retreat Lighting in the Sitting Room
Unlike the bedroom, the sitting room had PLENTY of ceiling lighting when we moved in – a little too much for my taste:
Although it’s convenient to flip a light switch and have immediate light in a room, there a some rooms that call for bright, directed, recessed lights, and others that do better with something a little more subtle. This sitting room is small, and unless we were planning to perform some sort of surgery in here, we didn’t need this much ceiling lighting, especially without a dimmer. So I asked my contractor to remove the can lights, and replace them with one central light fixture. I also added another ceiling medallion, and a dimmer switch. I did a lot of searching for the right fixture, and of course tried them all out in my mood boards, but when I came across Chandelier Model No. 2279 by Peared Creations, I knew I had found the perfect one!
I am completely smitten with the graceful arched arms and subtle Art Deco influence of this chandelier, and I think the price point, at just under $500 is excellent. All of Peared Creation lighting is hand made in Southern Ohio, and the quality really speaks for itself. They have so many styles to choose from and all different kinds of lighting, from wall sconces to chandeliers and even table lamps. Each light fixture is made to order, so it takes about a week for them to make your order, and then another week to ship. Please check them out when you’re in the market for lighting in order to support American manufacturing and design. Peared Creation was kind enough to partially sponsor this chandelier for me, but you can use this code for 10% off – just enter BROWSE10 at checkout. Look at how beautiful this chandelier looks in my sitting room!
A Very Special Table Lamp
About a year ago, my parents asked if I would be interested in “adopting” a vintage lamp that had belonged to my mom’s sister, who passed away in 2020. I replied with a big “YES PLEASE”! At the time, I hadn’t started planning the Romantic Retreat, so I wasn’t sure where I would put it, but I was so honored to inherit the lamp, and knew I would someday find the perfect spot in my home for it. The lamp originally belonged to my grandparents, who collected antiques, so it’s been in our family for a very long time. I’ve started doing a little research on it, and it could have been made by a company called the Fenton Glass Company, and I’m guessing it’s at least 60 years old, but if it’s not a 60’s reproduction, it could be at least 100 years old. Here’s one I found on Ebay that is similar.
Although I have fond memories of my grandparents’ antique furniture, rugs, and art as a child, I didn’t have a clear memory of this lamp specifically, other than knowing it had a cranberry colored glass shade, and a carved brass female figurine as the base. The lamp is very heavy, and with the glass shade, and many crystals, it would have been risky to ship it, so my parents have been holding onto it until they could drive it here on a road trip from Arizona. They arrived Monday, and I was super excited to open the boxes and set up the lamp! It took us some time to clean and polish her, plus hang all of the crystals, but she’s all set up now, looking just like she was always meant to illuminate my Romantic Retreat!
Romantic Retreat Bedroom Window Treatments
Almost every. single. window in this house was covered in ugly, clunky, white plastic, horizontal blinds when we moved in. I pulled them out as quickly as possible from any room that either didn’t need them, or where I knew I would soon be replacing them for new window treatments. But in the Primary Bedroom and Sitting Room, they’ve remained until I started the ORC, because we needed something for light control and privacy until now. Here they are before we moved in:
When deciding what kind of window treatments to use, whether for myself or clients, I look at several factors which can help make a decision. Firstly, it’s important to identify the function the window treatments need to fulfill – will they be used to darken the room or provide privacy? Or will they be purely decorative? Once we know the function, we can move on to what will be possible in the space, and what type of window treatments will add to the overall aesthetic of the project. Is there space for floor to ceiling drapes? If not, can Roman shades work? I knew that the large picture/bay windows in the bedroom would work well with curtains, and I wanted the functionality of having sheers as well as room-darkening drapes. This meant using a double rod, so that the drapes could hang from the front rod, and the sheers from the back rod. One of my favorite tricks for drapes that look much more expensive and custom than they are, is to purchase ready-made curtains, and then add trim, pinch pleats, and/or hem them to the perfect length. I found these double rods on Amazon, and liked the “marble” look finials. I wanted to use velvet curtains, and was hoping to find the same brand I used in my dining room, but in a mauve tone that would work in the room, but unfortunately, none of their mauve or blush colors were quite right, so I landed on these instead. The quality isn’t nearly as nice as the HPD drapes I’ve used in my own dining room and for clients, but the color was perfect. I took them to One Stop Sew Shop to have curtain tape added to the tops so that I could hang them by these curtain rings, and found this pretty, vintage floral trim tape on Etsy, which they added to the leading edges of each curtain. Finally, I used these linen blend sheers on the back rods so that we can just close the sheers for privacy, while allowing sun to filter through.
Romantic Retreat Sitting Room Window Treatments
Just like the bedroom, the sitting room windows were also adorned with the same crappy horizontal blinds up until last week!
Choosing new window treatments for the sitting room was a very different brief than for the bedroom. Although the bedroom is open to this room, I knew from living in these rooms the past two years, that while we closed the bedroom blinds every night for darkness and privacy, these were never even lowered down or closed. This meant we didn’t need to replace them with anything totally functional, but I still wanted to soften the windows with textiles, so I chose relaxed Roman Shades. I had this image saved in my Pinterest board for this room for over a year, and it was exactly the type of window treatment I wanted in here:
I love the patterned fabric used for the shade above, as well as the addition of the trim on the sides and bottom, and although that room doesn’t have a giant wall mural like my sitting room, the designer still does an excellent job of incorporating a bunch of patterns and art that all work together so well. I also wanted to find a small-scale floral fabric that would work with the mural, and tried all of my options on this mood board to imagine how they might look.
This small scale teal and aqua floral fabric above is what I fell in love with! I had first spotted it on another website for around $35 a yard, but ended up finding it here for just $10 a yard – BARGAIN!! Now all it needed was a trim which incorporated either the mauve or magenta tones into the shades. I ordered several velvet ribbons from Amazon, and had to return a couple to get the right color and width. The velvet ribbon I chose is actually a color somewhere in between mauve, lavender, and magenta, and although it doesn’t specifically match anything else, I think it works really well. That said, I was actually a little worried about these shades from the time I sent the work order to One Stop Sew Shop, until they were hung. I kept wondering if it would all just be “too much”, and thought maybe I should have chosen a solid fabric, or just left the windows undressed. But I’m glad I trusted my gut and just went for it, because I LOVE the way they turned out so much!!
So there you have it! All the new lighting and window treatments which are making the Romantic Retreat feel almost complete! I’m very happy with how these rooms are shaping up, and next week I’ll be sharing some of the AMAZING furniture flips that Becky Brent and I have dreamt up! And until then, don’t forget to check out all of the progress my fellow participants have made in Week Six right here!
Cheers to Fab Interiors!
Justine
Here is my ORC progress
Week 1 || Week 2 || Week 3 || Week 4 || Week 5 || Week 6 || Week 7 || Week 8
