ORC Week 2: color palettes and fabric selections

So, I have to admit it: I'm having cold feet.

After some lovely feedback last week about how beautiful the rooms are now (thank you! thank you!), I'm feeling a little bit crazy to make over finished rooms so publicly.  Usually when I share a room transformation, there are two elements to the reveal:  both the "good" of the finished space, but also the "WAY BETTER" compared to the before.  For my first ORC, the "after" likely won't be better than the before.  My hope is that it will be "equally good but different."

With that off my chest, let's talk about what we're working with, and color palettes.

Choosing a paint color for Clio

For Clio, in the large pink room, I am hoping to keep almost everything--the orange trellis rug, the chinoiserie curtains, the orange headboards, the campaign dresser.  Over spring break, we spotted this pink striped chaise at a vintage store and she fell in love.  I couldn't believe that they still had it all these months later, but they did!

While I would love to reupholster it, I can't really justify it when the darn thing's so cute already!  She originally said navy for the walls, and I was thinking I could totally work with navy, pink and orange.  But then she threw me for a loop: green.

I LOVE green.  But we had some problems.  Dark green felt too competitive with the headboards (especially the emerald shades she favored), but light green felt kind of gross.  Especially since I could not persuade her into a pear green (with more yellow in it), like the green in the curtains.  If it was going to be light, she wanted mint.

I tried.  But I just didn't love it.  Plus it would have meant repainting the ensuite bathroom, which was only recently painted an acid yellow.  Dominoes, people.

Do you know that regular color story in House Beautiful?  Thanks to that column, I did a sample board of Lehigh green, a color I probably never would have thought of.

Much better than the wimpy greens we were looking at.

I love how it looks with the yellows in the room, so much so that I decided to keep this painting in here.  And, surprisingly, I LOVE how it looks with the bathroom color.

Reupholstering the headboards

What I did NOT love was the green with all the strong orange--too much of the same color value in the room.  So I decided I could handle reupholstering the headboards....again.  I loved the yellow against the green so much that I pulled some yellow and white prints from the design center--small scale, so as not to compete with the large scale trellis of the rug.  And then I went to the fabric warehouse and found a good option for $6 a yard!

So that's (somewhat) a plan for Clio.  Still to source: a desk for between the beds, a floor lamp for the chaise, and accent pillows for the beds to tie it all together.

Choosing a paint color for Eleri

Eleri's room will be the bigger transformation and is probably the "real" focus of this challenge.  She has been clear from the beginning that she wants sky blue walls and white curtains with pom poms.  I wanted Palladium blue, which is more of a blue-green, but she took one look and said "no mom, that's blue green.  I want SKY blue."  And so she got it.

Benjamin Moore Fantasy Blue

Fabric selections for Eleri

So for her, the big question was supporting colors.  I already posted about this, but I will include it here again.  I picked up a pair of pastel suzani euro shams on sale at Pottery Barn and let that dictate the palette.  

I've had checkerboard on the brain and immediately went to buffalo check for the headboard.  The plan is to reuse a bunch of stuff: the blue hotel bedding, mid century desk, a natural fiber rug layered with a sheepskin rug, some green lamps I can spraypaint orange, a pair of Ikea linen curtains I have lying around, and the swing chair from her old room.

Still to figure out: a dresser situation, art, and the rest of the textiles.

Stay tuned!  I'll be back next week with more.  For now, check out all the linking participants who are playing along at Calling it Home.