I am so excited to be participating in the One Room Challenge this Fall. I am currently in the process of updating my first home with my Fiance. Designing our first place together while planning our wedding has been both exciting and a bit overwhelming to say the least.. but we are more excited for this next chapter of our lives than anything!

The room that I have decided to focus on for the One Room Challenge is our Master Bedroom. The bedroom before was a “master disaster”. The room had purple wood paneled walls, a dingy ceiling fan that rocked and squeaked when on, flooring that was damaged, and lack of functional space.

Here is the room Before:

My plans for the new space is create a light and serene environment for both of us to retreat to at the end of the day. Since it is a small bedroom, the layout will need to be improved to maximize the space as much as possible. I’d like to open up the ceiling and remove the drop ceiling and commercial looking ceiling tiles and add a smooth sheetrock ceiling with crowne molding to make the room feel larger.

There are (2) closets across from the bed wall that are very shallow and have book shelves inside. Since those closets are not functional for clothing, my plans are to bump out the closets and create an open niche for a dresser and functional storage. Also from an aesthetics standpoint — staring at a closet at night just isn’t pleasing and from a design psychology standpoint, it just gives me bad vibes. So in order to make this bedroom "feel” calming and inviting, we must eliminate those strange closet doors and open up the area for functional and decorative pieces.

My Fiance insists on having a tv in the bedroom, so he’ll get his tv and that niche could be the perfect place for it.

Since the room is small, that means we only have room for 24-28” nightstands. To maximize the bedside table surface area, I envision hanging modern pendant lights above each nightstand.

Here is a preview of my design concept for the master bedroom. My personal style is modern and streamlined with touches of natural elements (hello, plants everywhere) and my future hubby’s style is rustic with hints of industrial. Both styles compliment each other and I think it will be a great balance of modern and rustic.

The design concept above is light an airy. The walls I will be keeping it light and mixing other shades of medium and dark taupe for contrast and depth. The wall color will be light to make the room feel as open as possible, and I am thinking of doing a dark accent wall inside the niche (across from the bed). I really loved how the natural lighting came in even on an overcast day and on the purple walls, so using light colors will only enhance the “airy” feeling because whites are more reflective to sunlight.

As for materials and fabrics, I will be adding layers of tactile textures. The window treatments will be layered with a natural grass shade and curtains layered top for additional privacy at night. We will be installing luxury vinyl plank flooring in a “drift oak” finish. The vinyl plank has a lot of texture to it and looks realistic.

The dresser that I selected also has a drift finish with light cerusing. Cerused finish is an oak finish technique that fills in the grains with a color. In the 16th century, this trending technique was started to fill the porous open grain of the planks, usually in white and also was known as “limed oak”. Modern cerused finishes today can be shades of white to gray.

Those are my ideas for now, follow along for next week as I lay out the furniture and create a rendering of the design.

To view previous room updates, click on a post below:

WEEK 1 : The Master Bedroom Before

WEEK 2 : Planning + Furniture Layout

WEEK 3: Furniture Shopping with Intention

WEEK 4: My Painting Tips + Color Selections

WEEK 5: Shopping for Window Treatments Tips

WEEK 6: The BIG REVEAL!