While I’ve had the overall vision for this bedroom in my head for a long time (and been working on a mockup), now that I’m getting down to the details, I’m starting to rethink, question, question and possibly tweak the design a bit. If you’ve been around for a while, you know this is normal for me. I start with a simple roadmap, but then take a few scenic detours along the way.
Let’s discuss a few details about this bedroom. The trim for the curtains arrived yesterday, so I brought everything into the room to take a look.
First, there’s the bird fabric that I want to use for the headboard (I think that’s one of the things I’m questioning). Additionally, you can see the orange/coral fabric I plan to use for the piping cord around the upholstered headboard. And on top of that you can still see the actual grass cloth wallpaper, which is a little darker and more colorful than the current wall color. And then on the left is the curtain fabric and trim that arrived yesterday.
My first impression when I saw the panel was that it was fine. It will be enough. I mean, if you buy discount trim instead of the $50 per yard trim, you get what you pay for. It’s pretty. It’s a little brighter than I hoped. But it will be enough.
But then I accidentally flipped it over so the back was visible, and I liked it even more. On the back, the dominant color is orange and the accent color is cream white. I think this looks much better.
Here is a close up of the fairing on the right. You can see that the background is satin. It’s kind of shiny. I’m just not into shiny surfaces in general.
But here’s the back. I LOVE how this looks. It’s a lot bolder, which I like. It’s not shiny, which I REALLY like. So I’m going to use the trim so that the back is visible, rather than the front like I originally planned.
But I still think it’s just a touch too bright. Everything – orange and white – seems a little too bright for the rest of the items in the room. So I think I’ll try to do something to tone it down a bit. I don’t want it to be completely boring and dark. I just want to do something to lower the brightness a bit. The only thing I can think of is to stain it with a very weak tea. I’m pretty sure it’s been over a decade since I’ve used tea-stained fabric, but luckily I still have six yards of this trim left to play around with. If there is another way to remove some of the brightness you know other than leaving tea stains, let me know and I will test that method too.
The next thing I wondered about is the headboard. Let’s go back to this model that I’ve shown you all a thousand times over the last few weeks. And you can see that my original plan was to use this bird fabric for the actual headboard.
Well, I’m rethinking that plan and wondering if I might want to make the headboard out of a different fabric and then use the bird fabric for the actual bedding. And the reason I thought about this is because I was thinking about how I like to dress a bed. Generally, I like to use two really large, square pillows at the headboard and then a few smaller pillows in front of them. And if I use the bird fabric just for the headboard and then start putting big pillows in front of the headboard, I’m covering up the pretty bird fabric.
For example, here is our bed from our previous bedroom…
Look how much of the headboard is covered. Now imagine if the headboard was upholstered with my pretty bird fabric and you’ll see that most of it would be hidden. It would make more sense to put the pretty fabric on the big pillows, right?
Now that I’m ready to actually make the headboard (that’s the next project on my list), I’m reconsidering it. Of course, another option would be to make the headboard much larger. Instead of making the rectangular shape with the curved corners that I decided to do, I could actually make it bigger/taller. I could actually go back to the shape shown in the model above. This would allow more of the headboard to be visible, even with large pillows in front of it. I did that in our bedroom in the apartment. This bedroom had a patterned fabric on the headboard, but since it was a very high headboard, the patterned fabric was still visible even with the large pillows in front of it.
Of course, now that I’m ready to actually make the headboard, I’m having second thoughts. It’s just what I do.
So the options are:
- Keep the headboard shorter and rectangular with rounded corners, but cover it with a solid fabric. That would create space above the headboard for artwork, and then I could use the bird fabric for the actual bedding – two large pillows on the headboard and possibly a duvet cover; or,
- Leave the bird fabric on the headboard, but choose a taller, curved shape so that it is still visible even when two large pillows are placed against it.
