Decorating: A Corporate Waiting Room

No before and after here--because the "before" was just an empty room! This commercial project on a budget was a fun challenge with a great result.

Color: Lavender Because it Works

 I don't always have great photos to share when I do remote consultations, so some imagination is required here. In spite of having a tall ceiling and a large skylight, the room felt dark to the owner. The culprit was this busy milk chocolate colored wall paper, and the solution was paint. The owner's favorite color is purple and she wanted a room in her house that color, so I suggested this one. Since it was a fairly small room, I suggested a light, dusty lavender that would make her happy but not scare the rest of her family and friends out of the space. Just one shade more purple than taupe, dusty lavender and lilac are great in small spaces. The purple aspect can be played up with accessories or played down the same way. I also suggest at least a satin and sometimes even a semi-gloss for bathrooms. The glossier finishes through around more light and resist mold and water damage better than flat paints.

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Color: Yellow To Say Hello!

For this entrance, I pulled out my secret weapon again: Yellow! This is the front entrance of a rather stately Southern home, which meant a big porch and two giant live oaks were sucking up the sun! The all off white walls, trim, etc. just made the room look blah. A sunny yellow called Suede Tan brought life and warmth to the space. Decorating with bold blue accents and crisp white gave the room punch and a slight French country vibe perfect for a home in Louisiana. Your entrance is the first room buyers will see, so make sure it makes an impression. I've used this color in several entrances for staging and decorating, and it's always a winner.

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Staging: Goodbye Pirate Ships!

There was a lot going on in this bathroom that made it a hard sell. Obviously, it had been decorated for young boys. That is too specific when selling your home. The hall bath needs to appeal to a general audience. Also, the wallpaper was peeling, and there was just NOT a cohesive color story going on. Gray walls, pinkish floor, soft yellow counter top, tub, surround, and toilet, and white cabinets. When selling your house, I always recommend that rooms (especially small ones like baths) be simplified down to 2 or 3 colors. In this case, I peeled down the wallpaper, which had been glued directly to fresh drywall and therefore tore up the walls. Instead of paying to have the room floated, I opted to use this new texture to give the room character. Since the house is in southern Louisiana, a stucco texture was in keeping with local decor and gave the room a little New Orleans flare. I chose a paint called Cream Puff that matched the soft yellow color of the fixtures and added dry sand to it to create texture. The cabinets were slightly scuffed and scraped, but instead of repainting them, I got out my sander and roughed them up some more. New toilet paper holder and towel hangers from Hobby Lobby made the room even more New Orleans chic. Some bold blue accessories continued the home's color story into this room and complemented the soft yellow. I white frame made out trim boards from Lowe's made the mirror feel finished and turned it into the only artwork the room needed.

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Staging: Romantic Sunroom Makeover

No one loves a room where it looks like you have to sit alone.....

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Staging: Decluttered Bathroom

I don't really have a lot to say here. Clear off the counter, clean off the walls, and take the carpet off the toilet seat. It's that old rule: get rid of 3 out of 5 things. Also, toilet seat covers, etc. just make buyers wonder what you are hiding.

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After: Goodbye furry turquoise toilet!

Color: Red Carpet Treatment

So, you bought a house with red carpet (or dark green, blue, purple) and you can't afford to change it right away. Or, you are selling your house and don't want to spend money on changing it. What to do? The answer is simple: Make it look like you mean it--or as I am constantly telling clients, stop fighting it. You aren't going to do yourself any favors by putting in a bunch of other colors to try to disguise it. Bring that color up off the floor and into the rest of the room. Whether it's a bedroom or a living room, get matching throw pillows to bring the color up a couple of feet. Look for artwork that features the color and pull it higher up on to the walls. Keep wall color and window treatments neutral but go for a color that enhances and maybe even tames the carpet. Linen, oatmeal, and warm tans soften red while gentle grays can tone down greens and purples. Stark white can be fun and bold if you want to just go for it and really play up the color you have. Also try to avoid busy patterns that will compete with the color and confuse the eye. If you work with what you have to make it as beautiful as possible, it becomes a feature that other people will love too!

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Color: Aqua Bathroom Update

What do you do when you inherit colored/dated bathroom fixtures? Well, the expensive answer is to rip them all out and replace them. In this case, we had two shades of aqua on the tub and sink and a gray blue toilet. The room looked like contractor's leftovers and featured a cheap plastic sink faucet. Yay! The counter top contained yet another shade of blue and the wallpaper even more. The elephant in the room was a giant one piece tub/shower made of cast iron and porcelain. Getting it out would have required serious demolition to the side of the house. So instead of fighting it, I decided to work with it and couldn't have been happier with the results. I painted the walls the same color as the tub and surround, which made it disappear into the background and made the room feel larger. The sink and toilet and faucet were replaced with crisp white, and white bead board and chair rail in the bath area broke up the blue. Counter and back splash were replaced with warm neutrals to balance the space and play nice with the oak cabinets. Updated oil rubbed bronze pulls also make the oak feel less dated. I never worry about matching hardware in a room since mixed metals give a room a sense of history and interest as long as they look good together. Buying a factory laminated counter-top from the kitchen department, cutting it down, and using inexpensive floor tiles for the back splash made for an affordable project. Painting over the wallpaper instead of taking it down saved time and money and headache. If it's glued on seven ways to Sunday, just leave it! A see through shower curtain is great for staging or decorating as it will gain you about 3 feet of real estate in most bathrooms.

Pro tip: close the dang toilet before you take photos! lol

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Color: Yellow My Secret Weapon

A lot of people are afraid of color, and they are flat out terrified of yellow for some reason. I'm not sure why this is since it is such a cheerful and welcoming color, and quite frankly, the answer to a lot of drab and dreary spaces. Take laundry rooms for example. They tend to be small and windowless, and just not fun places to do work. The fastest way to fix that is to put a fun color on the walls, and my weapon of choice is yellow because it makes a room feel sunny window or no. In this room, I also put down heavy duty peel and stick tiles that could be grouted with latex grout. This is one of my favorite kinds of flooring. The grout makes you look twice to see if they are real tiles, and the slate color plays very well with yellow. Even with the light off, this room looks sunny and bright. I liked the yellow so much, I even painted the inside of the closet! Don't forget to make your whole work space cheerful, and laundry won't feel like just such a chore.

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