Tweaking a guest room to make it personal

This guest room is getting a makeover!

One of the pleasures of working with repeat clients over the years is getting to put a new spin on spaces we designed together. In life, the way we use our homes adapts to circumstance (as anyone living in 2020 can certainly tell you!) and most of us don’t want to start from scratch every time we have a life change.

We originally designed this space as a guest room, not long before my client’s nephew came to stay with her. (He lived there when it was photographed for publication, and he was tickled to have his room on the cover of a magazine! You can read the full story online, here.)

But the time came where his temporary stay turned to permanence and the need came to make this room all his.

We decided that the elements that skewed younger and more masculine could stay: Headboard, rug, wall lights, curtains. For functional purposes we wanted to change out a cabinet and dresser to newer ones with drawers that glide, and in a scale more fitting to the room. We knew that swapping the bedding and nightstands would be transformative without breaking the budget.

We also needed some new pieces that were young and fun. We sourced very adorable embroidered pillows from Coral and Tusk and let him pick a favorite. (There is even a little fox pillow that tucks into a pocket in the main pillow!)

The vintage mirror over the bed went down to the new powder room, and a train print got framed to hang in its spot. Here it as on the framing table. I love how the delicate etched texture relates to the embroidery on the pillow, and has a similar charming vintage feeling.

We also decided to keep the wallpaper on the headboard, AND ALSO to add some starry night wallpaper to the ceiling, the major request from my young client. We looked at a bunch of constellation papers (and we will round them up in another post), but ultimately landed on a classic Ralph Lauren.

The black ground ties in to the dark elements in the space while the gold stars connect to tones in the Schumacher paper on the headboard wall. We are ordering the paper now, which made this feel like a perfect time to post.

Here are all the new elements together in the design board:

Obviously projects that start from scratch can be exciting, but there is nothing more satisfying then getting creative and making spaces work through change.

What spaces do you need to re-imagine as your world changes?