How to Translate Inspiration into Rooms You'll Love to Live In

Because a) I am crazy, or b) because I don't have a project currently on the go at the moment, I've decided to write a little series on How to Decorate. My mind just won't quit! This is the first part of the first step in the five step series. The Introduction is here.




So, you want to decorate a room.

You're not happy with it, something isn't working. You want to change it.

Where do you begin?

Where do you start? What's the very first thing you need to consider?

The feels.

For real.

You need to know how you want to feel in your room.  

Decorating is really about emotion. Yes, really. It’s about capturing how we want to feel when we’re inside our homes, inside each room. Cosy. Warm. Sheltered. Full. Loose. Joyful. Sexy. Calm. Creative. Whatever.

So, how do we do that? How do we translate how we want to feel into furniture and rugs and light fixtures that make us feel the way we want to feel?

It's not hard. Here’s how:

4 Steps to Creating Décor with all the Feels

1) Begin at the beginning. Answer the question: how do you want to feel in your room? List out the adjectives.

2) Find things (or more accurately, pictures of things), two or three no more, which make you feel that way.

3) Analyse the characteristics of your inspiration pieces

4) Translate them into your rooms.

I’ll walk you through it.

Step 1. Identify the Feeling

Let’s say I have a sitting room that functions as a guest room from time to time. Let’s say I want it to feel cosy. More than that: enveloped. I want to feel full, like I lack for nothing: abundant. I don’t want anything austere. This is full on fecundity, ripeness, comfort.

2. Find Your Inspiration

So, what might evoke those emotions?

There are all sorts of possibilities.

Flowers, a garden at harvest, lots of food--maybe fruit, . In fact, I immediately thought of a fruit stall where the fruit is piled high.  So, I went looking for one.

This is what I found:

source

I love it. It is lush. Abundant. Full. Energizing, yet peaceful. It's gorgeous, too.

Step 3. Analyse its Characteristics.

Let's break it down.

Colours: Blues, greens, yellow-greens, purple-pink and the tiniest bit of orange. Opposites are quite energizing.

Shapes: There are actually two shapes, here. Mostly, everything is a smooth round or oval. Roundness = comfort. Yet, the way they are grouped--more or less in stacks--creates rectangles. There is order and security.

Patterns: The rectangles, one on top of another form a grid, in this instance, a checkerboard. It reminds me of a quilt with each group of fruit reminding me of a patterned fabric. There are even stripes in one of the stacks. For someone else, this may put them in mind of a gallery wall, window panes, or a bookcase.

Textures: The apples are smooth and shiny. The berries are smooth and matte, almost frosted. The canteloupe is rough. The citrus fruits are mottled, kind of soft but nubby, too. Like a knit throw. There’s lots and lots of softness. All these textures is another reason I love this particular picture of a fruit stall.

Materials: This image doesn't really have any materials we would use in a room, per se, But the whole image makes me think of natural materials: like wood and cotton and naturally, growing things.

Step 4: Translate

From now on, everything you place in your room must have one or more of these characteristics, broadly defined. Like this room.

I think that if I were to spend any time here, I just might feel all the feels:

source

Colours: There’s a good mix of warm and cool.

Shapes: The individual pieces of fruit in the inspiration piece are expressed in the patterns of the fabric on the pillows. Their round shapes are loosely interpreted as the softness in the pillows. The rectangles are expressed in the window panes, the couch, the bricks and the pillows themselves.

Textures: The windows are smooth and shiny. The wood table is smooth and matte. The rug is rough. There’s even a knubby knit throw.

Materials: It all feels very natural, doesn’t it? The wood. Cotton. Brick. And, of course, the plant.

Let's take another example of translating some inspiration into another room--this time a bathroom.


1. The Feels we want to feel: sophisticated, modern, classic, crisp.

2. The Inspiration:

source

3. The Characteristics:

Colours: Black, white, grey, tan/brown and pale blue. Do we count the orange? Up to you. 

Shapes: Curves! And something round. Rectangles.

Patterns: Stripes, if you can call it that. Brick.

Textures: Soft. The straw hat could be considered semi-rough. Smooth. Hard. Shiny. Rough.

Materials: Fabric. Concrete. Paper. Brick. Leather. Metal. Whatever a Rolls is made of.


 4) Translation:

This is one tremendously glamorous option:

source

Colours: Black, white, tan/gold.

Shapes: Curves in the veins of the marble. The round tub. Rectangles: the bench, window panes and mirror.

Patterns: There's more of a colour block effect happening with the black and white. No stripes.

Textures: Soft towels. Smooth, hard. and shiny marble and porcelain. 

Materials: Fabric. (window shade). The marble reminds me of the Rolls.

But this is just one style. And it may not be yours. In fact, you and I could have the identical inspiration photo of the woman in the black dress and hat--and use the same characteristics--yet come up with a totally different room.

Bathroom II

source

Colours: Black, white, grey. I wish they had painted that stool blue!

Shapes: Round lampshade, round stool, round towel rack. Curves in the floor tile. The round tub. Rectangles: tiles, window blind, mirrored medicine cabinet.

Patterns: Another colour block effect happening with the black and white. The brick tile subtly stripes the room.

Textures: Soft towel. Smooth, hard. and shiny marble and porcelain. 

Materials: Metal fixtures. The tiles remind me of the brick.

Using inspiration pieces can be a really useful way to get at the emotions we want to feel in our rooms. When we know how we want to feel in a particular room, it isn’t all that hard to find something that inspires that particular feeling. Then, it’s just a matter of analyzing the characteristics of our inspiration piece to ensure we include those very same characteristics in our finished rooms.

But it has its limitations. To wit, this kind of inspiration only tells us what general characteristics to use. It doesn't tell us how to use them--how much, where to put them, that sort of thing. In the bona fide design world, these characteristics are better known as design elements. And the specifics of their use is a matter of our own personal style--and Part 2 of the first step: Create A Vision. 

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Five Steps to Decorating Any Room: An Introduction

Sorry the blog has gone silent these past ten days. The day after I posted the last ORC post, I came down with a whopper of cold. It is still with me, but all is well as long as I don't speak. I highly recommend fresh minced ginger and honey in hot water as a soothing drink.

I have been decorating since forever.

But it has only been in the last year or so that I've begun to notice that there is a definite way to go about it, a process, if you will. I have gone through this process a lot recently and it is more or less the same each time. I had planned to blog about each step and how it pertained to my ORC project as we went along, but time got away from me as it tends to do during the tight timeline of a One Room Challenge. So, now that we have some time, I can take a more leisurely approach and do a complete series on how to decorate--or make over--any room in the house. Today, the broad strokes.

There are five stages or steps.

1. Create a Vision

 A cohesive room starts with a cohesive vision. I love combing through Pinterest and Houzz and getting inspired. You can use magazines, too, of course. You can even use three dimensional objects and fabrics, if you prefer, and create a style tray. Whenever I start a new project, usually I start a new Pinterest board to put all my inspiration pictures in one spot.  The most important part of this process is to have the feel of the room figured out. Here, we're looking at Big Picture details like is there a lot of contrast--or a little? What are the textures like? Knowing how to analyse your inspiration is crucial to the process. Once you've done that, then you can make a mood board (or, as I've done many times, throw up a blog post) to capture the feel for the room.

This is the moodboard I put together for my Mom's powder room. 

2. Assess Your Needs

This is your why. There's not much point in making over a room unless it isn't meeting your needs at the moment. When I made over the living room, I was looking to bring a sense of style to the room. I wanted it cohesive and somewhat polished--I was tired of it being a a rag tag collection of unfinished projects and motley things. When I redid the dining room, I wanted a place for a lounge chair and a calming space capable of seating six comfortably for dinner.

one of the many floor plans I made for the Dining Room

3. Create Your Style

This is where we get into the nitty gritty. What will you walls be like? Will you change the colour? Will you panel them? Stencil them? Put up a gallery wall? What about your lighting? Do you have enough? What about your windows? Are you getting the best style statement you can from them? Does your room have oomph? Will there be Something that makes you sit up and take notice?

Hard to tell which makes more of a statement: that awesome stencil on the soffit or the fabulous colour of the cabinets.

4. Do the Work

For me, this almost always begins with decluttering. Especially if you are changing or modifying the purpose of the room, you will have to move out the old to make room for the new. As for the rest, your scope of work will depend upon what you're doing. This is also the time to talk about the budget.

a member of my wonderful "crew", my son Ben.

5. Add Accessories

Now, we can layer in the art, put the books on the bookshelves, and figure out the most attractive way to look after those things you need to keep by the sink, the coffee table, your nightstand, or what have you.

Fall Mantle

This process works. Although, of course, sometimes it's linear--and I do all the steps in order as I've outlined. But sometimes, it's more organic and I go back and forth between the steps in no particular order, figuring out things as I go. Nonetheless, this is the process and I plan to expand upon each of the steps in the next few months, so that by the next ORC (October 8, 2016) anyone planning on decorating a room will be more than ready to go.

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ORC 6: Presenting Mom's Totally Glam Powder Room

For the last eight weeks, my Mom and I have been working on the small powder room on her main floor. She had started before Christmas with ripping down old wallpaper and having new vinyl tile floors installed. I was working on a design plan and starting to order a few things when I decided to take this project and do it as a One Room Challenge.

Here's the story so far:

ORC 1: Going Insane Again
ORC 2: Hall of Mirrors 
ORC 3: Seven Steps to Stress
ORC 4: The Roller Coaster

ORC 5: What, Already?

ORC 5b: Lesson Learned

In many ways, I wish I hadn't taken this on. The pace of the challenge eats up every spare minute. It adds stress to an already stressful situation. But heavens, what if we had not done this room as a one room challenge? I'd have quit somewhere around week four or five. And then Mom would not now have this:

Here's where we began in earnest:

The floor, sink, faucet, toilet and shelf are all that remain.

We aren't quite done.

We still have to finish the top edge of the tile with some wood trim, painted to match the bottom. Like so:

It will finish the room beautifully.


When we started the project, you couldn't get into the bathroom on the sink side. We'd put an old Billy bookcase in the doorway--it just fit--in order to create a "closet" for much needed storage. However, we needed more room while we were working and removed it somewhere around week three or four. Both of us loved it instantly.

The light fixture was my Mother's day gift to my Mom. Is that weird?

We discovered two things when we installed the light fixture two days ago. 1) The hole was a bit too big for this fixture, and 2) it was not centered over the sink. The solution to both of these problems wasn't something we felt we could do in two days!

Here is that wall from the other angle.

You can see the two pieces of art we chose from Minted.

Mom calls this one Venice: (That may actually be its official name.)

We bought this framed. I added the thin line of gold to the outer edge.

This one is The Long Road. (Officially.)

It's beside the Roman shade on the wall, opposite the fixtures:

It was really hard to get a good shot of this. Mom made it. She says the Waverly fabric is another "work of art." I totally agree.

I love that we hung it almost at the ceiling: we can see more of that fabric!

The mirror was a last minute find from Value Village. I could not resist it, even though installing it presented a huge challenge. It has so much character!

The towel rack was another value village score for $2.99! Bonus: it was already bronze--and acrylic! So old it's new again!

So, here are a few more pretty shots before I take a really long nap.

And that's a wrap.

Thank you to everyone who cheered me on these past six weeks. I really appreciate it. The featured designers inspired me each and every week to keep going and remain true to my vision. It was wonderful knowing that even the professionals experience setbacks and hiccups. You really should check out their works here.

And one of the reasons the One Room Challenge is so worth doing is the company of many, many others, just like me, doing the same impossible things at all levels of complexity and budget. Check them out here, too. I am going to try and get to them all.

And most of all, thanks to Linda for hosting this incredible event.

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ORC 5b: Lesson Learned

I had really thought this time would be different.

Because we started a couple of weeks ahead of the "official" start of the ORC, I thought that the powder room project would be done by now. The last thing I expected is to be scrambling to finish on time.

The day ORC 5: What, Already? was posted, I jumped into my car after work and drove quickly to my Mom's. We ran to a moulding store to see if they had anything to top our tile. It was fifteen minutes before close, though, so we didn't exactly have time to browse. We left empty handed.

In a frantic effort to keep things moving along, I decided to start painting the upper wall.

I didn't stop to check the condition of the walls. In a couple of spots, I thought, hmm, I should sand this down. But I didn't stop to sand. I just kept going. I was using Marquee, a paint which promises one coat coverage, so I knew that when I was done, I would be done.

I wanted to be done.

So I kept going...and ran out of paint at about 9:20pm. I decided I would buy another can in the morning and finish up then.

The next day, I walked into the bathroom with my fresh can already open and ready to pour,

--and died.

The walls were awful. Horrible. The paint had flashed all over our patches--and there were patches everywhere. The little dribs and drabs I hadn't bothered to sand were glinting. Mocking me.

I have never had a project with so many setbacks. Not even the dressing room was this bad. It's a small project, really. Install tile, a window treatment, and paint. Put up a few pictures, a towel bar, mirror, and a light fixture. How can that possibly take eight weeks?

I had thought the project well in hand when I decided to make this an ORC project. I'd just blog what we did as we went along. But, I lost a week because of work, and then the drywall repair took a while and then the cutting of the trim and baseboards turned out to be horribly complicated and the fetching of the artwork cost us a day (which was a total of 25% of our available working time that week) and so on and so on.

And then, I took a short cut which cost us even more time.

I took another run to home depot and bought the proper grit of sandpaper to sand down our patches. I repatched in some places. And then we primed, as we should have done all along.

I am not sure I will ever do an ORC again. The deadline takes what is normally a fun and exciting thing to do and turns it into a gruelling, and exhausting chore. There are upsides, too, though, so we'll see.

But no more shortcuts.

Lesson learned.

ORC 1: Going Insane Again
ORC 2: Hall of Mirrors 
ORC 3: Seven Steps to Stress
ORC 4: The Roller Coaster

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ORC* 5: What? Already?

I may be babbling.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I am.

No wait, that water all over me is from using the tile saw. I said to Mom, "I'm pretty sure professionals don't get soaked."

Sorry, should have got  pic. Here's one of my tile all laid out in the hallway, instead.

But whatever. It was Wednesday. It was hot. It was OK until it got dark and the wind picked up--but even then I really didn't care. The wet saw and I were buddies. I was shaving the tile. It was good.

Except the white I chose--and took two days to paint--is the wrong white. At least my gut says it is.

To be fair, we also re-trimmed out the window in those two days.

We put in a piece of wood. Then we took it out,. Then we put it back in again. This is how we renovate.

But, ugh. I did not expect to take two of my three available days to work over at my Mom's this week to paint half the wall. (And the two doors, both sides, and trim. But still.)

So, may repaint. May change the lightbulb and that just might be OK. We will see.

Light fixture in the proper finish arrived. Yay. Much more yellow than I expected. Boo. Forgot to get a pic, though.

Our fabric has been here for weeks. Finally looked it today. Not enough for drapes. I cannot believe it. I just can't. We will have to do a roman shade instead. Outside mount. Never done that before--but I have made a roman shade and those babies take time. And attention to detail.

So.

But you know what?

It's all good.

An entire city to the north of us was evacuated Tuesday because of wildfires. Seventy thousand people got in their cars and headed....somewhere else.

All I'm doing is decorating a powder room. Not threatened by wildfire.

It's more than good. It's freaking fantastic.


Please check out the main contenders and their progress here.

And check out my fellow cohorts and our progress here.

Will we be ready for the Big Reveal next week?
Honestly, I've no idea.

What we need to do (I have four days available.):

• (eta) Grout! I forgot to mention I need to grout! (Yes, I am that tired.)
• (eta) Trim. OMG. The trim we bought for the top of the tile is just not going to work. I don't know what we were thinking. Probably nothing. I do remember Mom wasn't feeling well that day.
• Paint upper wall and ceiling
• Paint mirror? and put up.
• Paint towel rack? and put up.
• Install ceiling fan
• Spray paint ceiling fan cover
• Install light fixture
• Hang art (Paint frames?)
• Sew window treatment and install.
• Are weputting up the glass shelf?
• Photograph

eta (again) Links to previous weeks:

ORC 1: Going Insane Again
ORC 2: Hall of Mirrors 
ORC 3: Seven Steps to Stress
ORC 4: The Roller Coaster

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ORC* 4: The Roller Coaster

It's so hard to believe that yet another week has passed.

ORC 1: Going Insane Again
ORC 2: Hall of Mirrors 
ORC 3: Seven Steps to Stress

*I am doing an on-line challenge to transform my Mother's powder room from meh to totally glam in just five weeks. There are a lot of us this year--about 250!. We all link up on Thursdays to share our progress, here. On Wednesday, Linda, at Calling It Home, the creator of the challenge hosts her own hand picked designers and decorators as they report on their progress. I love reading all about their adventures.

 I was able to spend three days at my Mom's this week. I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped--but that's the nature of the Challenge. It's quite the roller coaster of accomplishments and setbacks.


Up:
I returned the light fixture to Lowe's...

It was the wrong finish

They shipped the replacement Wednesday....

Up:
Our art from Minted arrived!


Down:
Mom had to go to customs at the airport to pick it up...
and then out to the FedEx office there, too.
(That ate up most of one of our three days.)


Up:
All the trim for the lower half of the room is cut...
and installed....
even the tricksy bits.....

Down:
But we still need a piece of moulding to trim out the window properly....

Up:
We removed the bookcase that was hiding behind this door....

The top part is missing the back. I had planned to fix that.

Down:
and we lost a fair bit of storage...


Up:
but we gained so much room! and light! and air!


Up:
I started painting....


Down:
but I absolutely could not finish....

Any advice on what we can do about that nasty black pipe? The sink cannot be moved.

Staytunedfolks.....

Down:
So much work to do....
So little time.....

Up:
But I am optimistic we can make deadline.
(and maybe delusional.....)

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