My Big Mistake in Designing My Bedroom and
How to Avoid It

At the beginning of the stay at home order in Western Massachusetts, many people were uber productive with home projects. We were quarantined, stuck at home and going stir crazy. Home projects were just the thing to keep up motivation and productivity. While that feeling may have faded over time (Click HERE to see how to help increase productivity via interior design), I wanted to discuss my own personal quarantine project, what went wrong, how I fixed it and how you can avoid making the same mistake when designing your own home.

Contrary to popular belief, I very rarely work on my own home, but I felt the need to change things up while quarantined. So I decided that I would paint our master bedroom. Our master bedroom was a blue green color that you can see in the picture above and I wanted a much more soothing palette. I chose Alabaster by Sherwin-Williams. It’s kind of the color of plaster, a pretty off-white.
I thought that I was going to just paint. Haha I should know myself better!
Once the room was painted I wanted more!

We had wanted a king size bed for a while. Let’s be honest, the king size bed was for our dog that sleeps with us. I knew that I wanted an upholstered bed, but I couldn’t find the one I had in mind. It was time to go custom! So I contacted my favorite custom upholstery guy, told him what I wanted and he was all in.

So I painted the room and got a king size bed. Sooooo what happens when you get a bigger bed? You need to get new bedding. I do not recommend beautiful custom bedding for everybody. I can’t see spending on custom when our 12-year-old dog sleeps on it. So I opted for washable bedding. And you know what happens when an interior designer has to settle for inexpensive bedding? We add gorgeous custom pillows to up the ante! That’s exactly what I did. I designed custom pillows!

So here we are with the newly painted room, a new bed and new bedding. Truth be told we had crappy draperies hanging on all of the windows. I had hung them when we moved in 15 years ago. And like most of you, I hadn’t thought about them since. Was I planning on getting new custom draperies? No. But, there was this beautiful drapery fabric that I had fallen in love with! (See picture below) So I decided to bite the bullet and order the new draperies and roman shades.

So here we are with a beautiful bed, new bedding, gorgeous custom window treatments and our old dresser and our old nightstands! What do you think happened next?

Yup, I ordered a new dresser. I was still thinking that we could use our current nightstands, thinking that they would coordinate with the new dresser. We like to watch TV in bed at night so I needed a longer dresser that was in better scale with the bed and in better scale with the TV.

So I got a new dresser. But then guess what happened? I didn’t think my night stands really went with the style of the dresser so I was going to get new nightstands. Instead, I saved by swapping out the hardware and they were ok. But here’s the thing. After doing all of this, I wasn’t just going for OK. And if you’re a client of ours, then you know I always say “We’re not going for OK, we’re going for I love it!” It was time for me to take my own advice. I ordered coordinating nightstands, NOT matching nightstands! You know I always say not to buy a set of furniture. Choose things that coordinate.
Sidenote here, like many of our current clients we are still waiting for our new nightstands. You’ll know when we get them because we will be photographing this room! They are due in April. We ordered them in December!

You would think that it would end there wouldn’t you? But no! We had bookshelves on one wall and they went with our current nightstands. After ordering the other furniture the bookshelves did not coordinate with anything in the room. But, I did save here. We had some bookshelves in our guestroom that would go perfectly with our new furniture. So I swapped the bookshelves in our bedroom with the bookshelves in the guestroom. I added some new accessories and VOILA, a brand new look.

This led me to our ceiling, which needed some repair. At this point I had completely redone the room except the ceiling. Why would I not do the ceiling repair when I had designed the entire room, right?

See the problem? The mistake that I made is that I did not have a plan! I tell my clients all the time that if you are going to redo a room, the number one thing that you need is a PLAN! If I had a plan done ahead of time, then I would have saved myself so much time and aggravation. Instead of an overwhelming project that just got bigger and bigger over time, it would have been organized, streamlined, budgeted and more digestible.

So here is my advice to you, come up with a plan, a full on plan, BEFORE you start doing any type of renovation, re-decorating or anything! Because if you haven’t, it’s like getting in the car with no destination. You’re just driving all around and it’s going to take you forever to get there. However, if you have a plan, a road map, you can just do the steps in the plan! Simple and easy.

I was meeting with a client recently, who just moved into a new home that was already furnished and painted. She just hired me to do window treatments and accessories. To pull everything together. We looked at some fabrics for her window treatments and I could have ordered those window treatments right then and there. But I didn’t. I waited until we had a cohesive plan because if I go and order those roman shades then we are locked in and if we happen to find some other accessories that we love even more than those roman shades, we don’t have the fluidity or freedom to change and pivot. So, I finished the cohesive plan for her whole house before I ordered those roman shades.

Planning is key and while it may seem restricting to lock yourself into a plan, it actually provides the structure to have the freedom to change based on specific items you may fall in love with down the road. For example, if you see some bedding that you like that’s on sale and you have a plan for your bedroom you could look at that plan and see if that bedding fits into it, instead of buying the bedding and then trying to work around it.

We do a ton of just consultations with clients. Many are not going to hire us, they just hire us for a consultation. Which is the perfect way to start any project. In fact, last year, I had a plan with a mom who wanted to do her daughter’s bedroom while her daughter was away at camp. She was going to do everything on her own, which is totally fine. We met with her, we gave her a floor plan of how to arrange things, we told her what she needed, we told her where to buy it and she was off and running!

So that’s the mistake: HAVING NO PLAN. It’s really hard to design and decorate when you just find one thing here and one thing there. It’s hard to pull it all together into a cohesive room. Even if I had said to you OK so these are your window treatments, now you need navy blue and white bedding. I’m just telling you it’s navy blue and white, not what exactly to buy, but the plan keeps you focused. I didn’t take my own advice and in the middle of my bedroom project I said to myself, “You tell people all the time to come up with a plan first and you didn’t do it!”

My bedroom has come together, but it’s been months! I got one thing here and I got one thing there. Yup, even a designer needs help sometimes. So if you need a plan for any room in your home, book a consultation HERE! Or, if you don’t know if you need a consultation, click HERE to schedule a FREE phone call.

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