TRADITIONAL BLUE AND GREEN DINING ROOM | One Room Challenge Reveal: Week 6
Welcome Back!! We’ve all made it through six weeks of extreme renovation for the One Room Challenge dining room makeover. If this is your first time here, welcome home. The One Room Challenge gives designers and DIY’ers a chance to complete one room or space in their home and share it with the world. For me, it has created a great community of other bloggers and design inspiration to help me complete parts of the house I’ve wanted to do, but haven’t had the motivation or time. It’s forced me to actually DO all of the things I have been wanting to do.
If you’re following #oneroomchallenge or #bhgorc on Instagram you can watch all the fun (and mishaps) in real time. You can see the process on the Highlights reel named “OCR 2019” of my instagram account Stampin.Fool.
WEEK 6: The Reveal of My New Traditional Blue and Green Dining Room
It’s time to show you the final result of a lot of planning to design a dining room to die for if you love color! A little background: my style has evolved over the last two years. I started out leaning towards clean lines, lots of white and blank space. But over time, the colonial house that we live in has grown on me and I have fallen in love with a new traditional style. Chinoiserie chic, a little bit of hollywood regency, and a few traditional blue and white pieces come together for an energetic, colorful room.
I went from a vastly devoid of color house, to slowly incorporation color into each room. I am thrilled with the outcome and I truly embrace the colonial style. Old doesn’t have to be old. Antique pieces and dark wood tones (gasp, I know!) can make a space look collected, interesting and intentional. Traditional doesn’t mean beige and it doesn’t mean dark colonial colors. A traditional space can use color and pattern. With all that said, I am excited to share our family dining room with you!!
BEFORE AND AFTER DINING ROOM
Are you ready to see some before photos:
After:
There are a few main players in the dining room design: the Thibaut Emerald Cane wallpaper, the Benjamin Moore Prussian Blue walls and trim, the blue and white china collection, the mini bar, and the plate wall. I knew from the start that I wanted a blue and green dining room. The wallpaper jumped out at me and from there, all of the other little things fell into place, including the paint color.
My collected blue and white pops against the green wallpaper and I couldn’t be happier about how bright it looks. I get all the feels when I walk into the room. I can’t stop staring at the walls.
While the layout of the room is a little awkward and it’s relatively small 11 1/2′ x 12′, and we couldn’t move walls due to the stair placement (and let’s be real- budget), but we were able to add a chair rail around the entire room and it really added architectural interest to a bland room.
The chandelier has five candelabras and five delicate crystal pendants handing from the arms. It is brushed silver and the simple understated shade really lets the wallpaper do all of the talking.
The sideboard is a white lacquered IKEA Besta unit. I love that it holds everything from my old full size china cabinet. I needed a smaller piece of furniture to fit into the room without adding too much visual weight. This piece was great, but it was a little too streamlined. I ordered Pretty Pegs 8″ turned wooded legs to give the sideboard a boost and a bit of traditional flair. It brought it to the right height, just above the table, and the legs definitely added softness.
One of the goals of the room design was to work around the structural layout of the room and make it beautiful despite the challenge of the stairs/HVAC being unlovable at this time. I have collected tobacco leaf plates, peacock plates, and Anthropologie plates along the way and I knew the dining room was the perfect place for a plate wall to display them all. Because this wall is freestanding and unattached to both entrances to the dining room, the plate wall was a perfect display to accent the head of the table.
Check out the Metropolitan museum tobacco leaf plates and those adorable Anthropologie plates with Paige Gemmel’s Staffordshire palace dogs. I can’t stop collecting those cute chinoiserie Staffie dogs.
Chinoiserie/ noun (shee-nwazuh-ree): the imitation or evocation of Chinese motifs and techniques in Western art, furniture, and architecture, especially in the 18th century.
I’ll give you a little history lesson about chinoiserie decor while we’re talking about it. If you pick up a Traditional Home or Veranda magazine you’re bound to see blue and white vases, foo dogs, pagodas, and lacquered furniture. It’s a nod to Asian inspired decor as carried out by western artists. It started in the 17th century with European makers being inspired by Asian culture and art. It was exotic and unique. It led to misinterpretation and lavish designs adorned by the Aristocrats such as Louis XV of France and King George IV of England. It’s popularity grew and it has been imitated since.
It makes for beautiful pottery, chippendale furniture, faux bamboo mirrors and chairs, ginger jars, floral and dragon fabrics and wallpapers, and much more. You may have seen dark red nature themed wallpaper, asian scenes on black and white fabric, and vases and jars with floral and bird motifs in blue and white. While there is a strong argument that Chinoiserie decor never went out of style, we have seen an uptick today in brightly colored reproductions that complement traditional decor and 18th century pieces the meld beautifully with contemporary art and design.
The dining room sits to the left of the front entry of our home. There is a small nook in the left corner of the dining room that was the perfect spot for a bar tray. I found a vintage silver mirrored tray that sits atop a metal stand with leather straps. It holds glasses, drinks and iridescent goodies, along with that palm leaf jar that I scored at Home Goods.
Sidenote- if you have an Earthfare store near you, RUN don’t walk to get their sparkling water. It is AMAZING!! It’s better than LaCroix.
There you have it. A colorful and collected dining room for our family to gather, eat and enjoy each others company. We play board games, work in early mornings and share a huge family Christmas Eve dinner in this room. I cannot wait to share the space now that it has personality and life.
And lastly, here are a few before and after shots together.
SOURCES
Paint Color: Benjamin Moore Prussian Blue
Wallpaper: Thibaut Cyrus Cane in Emerald (this is designer wallpaper and available to the trade only, so you will need to find a dealer to purchase)
Lamps: 24″ Courtney Double Gourd Lamp Pair Wayfair
Sideboard: IKEA BESTA with Lacquered doors and PrettyPegs Legs
Blue Table Tray: Amazon Jonathan Alder Now House
Table: Pier One
Chairs: World Market
Chandelier: Amazon Drum Chandelier
Rug: Target, Opalhouse
Vintage: Ginger Jar collection, mirrored drinks tray
Plate Wall: Invisible Hangers, Anthropologie Home
DINING ROOM DESIGN
Completing the room in six weeks was a challenging. It was a short time span to plan, order and execute. I didn’t start planning early this year. In fact, I waited until days before the first week began to decide to go for it. Here’s what I learned:
- PLAN & BUDGET. Having an entire decor plan will save you time and money. You won’t buy extraneous pieces if you have a plan for each item. Setting and sticking to a budget is equally important. It is so important that I wrote an entire post on it, as well as created a free downloadable spreadsheet for you! {BUDGETING FOR A DESIGN PROJECT}
- MEASURE EVERYTHING. Before you start shopping, measure and write down walls, corners, niches, furniture, windows, door openings, ceilings. Take those measurements and write them down seven ways from Sunday so that you can purchase enough paint, wallpaper, the correct size table, rug, sideboard. You want to make sure there is adequate space to move throughout the room. Measure twice and don’t forget to write it down and take it with you. Better yet, snap a photo of the measurements and layout so that you have it with you while shopping and ordering. {Ultimate Dining Room Measurement Guide}
- OUTDOOR RUGS in dining areas. If you read my last two posts, you’ll remember that I left the paint roller out and baby Helen painted the rug in a two second stroke while I was removing painters tape from the walls. While this is probably unlikely to happen to you (and hopefully never again here), outdoor rugs are great for dining areas because they can be easily spot cleaned and they repel water and drinks really well.
- DON’T BE AFRAID OF COLOR. I am a color lover. I love green. I love all the green things all the time. When I saw that Thibaut wallpaper, I knew I wanted it. But I second guessed myself of the wallpaper and the paint. I waited two weeks to order it. It left me wallpapering during the last week which added undue stress. It looks amazing. I am 100% thrilled with it. I should have gone with my gut and jumped to it sooner.
- WALLPAPER IS IN. Yes, wallpaper has been around for ages, literally. And that 1980’s wallpaper in your parents house is probably out. White walls are in. Gray is in. But let me tell you, wallpaper is definitely still in. And it is making a strong comeback in the DIY community. It’s always had its place in high end interior design, but don’t be afraid to add color, pattern, or even a subtle grasscloth texture to your favorite space with wallpaper. Quality designer wallpaper can be affordable. I was surprised that our dining room wallpaper came in under what I budgeted.
I truly hope you have enjoyed following along with our One Room Challenge project. Make sure you check out some of the other guest participants and featured designers on the ORC Blog for inspiration for every room.
As always, if you have questions or decorating dilemmas let me know and I’ll be happy to help!
XOXO
Thank you, thank you! It was a thrill to design and implement.
Thank you! Isn’t it beautiful. When I saw it, I knew I had to have it and that I would plan the room around it.
Thank you Lindsey! I love green and blue together too! It’s probably my favorite combination next to black and white.
Thanks so much Nicole!
I love all the colors. Pretty space.
That mix of green and blue is so fantastic and fun! And I love that white lacquered sideboard
LOVE! That wallpaper is GORGEOUS. Bravo —
Love the transformation!