Okay, y’all. I’ve read all of your comments and suggestions about my studio bathroom wall issue. I ignored the handful of comments that told me that the wallpaper was hideous or too busy. Let’s please get back to understanding that we all have different tastes, different levels of tolerance for busyness, pattern, and color, and that our homes are a place where we should feel free to express our own unique personalities. 🙂
I realize that I like a lot more color and pattern than a lot of other people do, but I especially like it in my studio. In the rest of our home, I feel like I have to be a little bit restrained for Matt’s sake (and sanity). And I’m happy to do that. He pretty much lets me do what I want to do in the rest of the house, but I know that if I were to truly let loose and do whatever my color-loving heart wanted to do, it would be too chaotic for him. I would relish it. I would thrive in it. He would feel suffocated.
But my studio is the one area in our home where I don’t have to ask for his input on anything. It’s my studio and my creative space. This is the one area where I’ve never once asked for his input, and he’s perfectly fine with that. And since it’s the one area where I can truly remove all of the guardrails and do what I want without restraint, I’m going to take that opportunity. I felt even more emboldened after taking some time to scroll through a few Instagram accounts that I follow of my fellow color maximalists (Banyan Bridges, Colordrunk Designs, and a few more), most of whom are way bolder with color and pattern throughout their whole homes than I am. So I’m determined to move forward with my color maximalist bathroom.
A while back, I almost made myself hold back considering that this bathroom will have to serve as our guest bathroom for the foreseeable future, but then I had a change of heart. I don’t want to hold back because, again, this is the only portion of my home where I don’t have to have any restraint, and I don’t want to give up that opportunity for the occasional visitor who might possibly need to use the restroom while they’re here.
So with that said, I’ll get back to your comments and suggestions. One that really stood out to me was a way that I could move forward with the wallpaper by using it in panels on each wall rather than trying to wrap it around the corners. I initially wrote off that idea because I couldn’t envision it. In my mind, if I did panels on the tops of the walls, they would have to match the wainscoting panels (picture frame molding panels) on the bottom portion of the walls in width. But if I did that, it would affect the placement of the mirror and make that look off and uncentered with the vanity.
But then someone suggest just using trim in the corners of each wall, and I wondered if that might actually work. It’s kind of hard to know from a mockup exactly what that would look like, but I would paint those strips of trim in the same color as the crown molding and the wainscoting (Behr Polar Bear, which is a creamy white) so that the top of the wainscoting, the crown molding, and the corner trim would create a big frame for the wallpaper. It would simply eliminate the need for the wallpaper to wrap around the corners. It would look something like this in each corner of the room, but you have to use your imagination to “see” all of the trim painted in the same color. And you also have to imagine the finished wainscoting that will extend about six inches above the vanity countertop.
That’s really the only idea that stood out to me. I don’t want to change course completely. At this point, I have my heart set on a square or very linear design with loads of color.
If that won’t work, or if it would look like an afterthought, then the only option is to paint the design. One thing I noticed this morning is that I didn’t even do a mockup of the vertical line design without the white between the colors. Immediately after I created that design in its large format, I just wrote it off and moved on to the next idea. But this morning, I decided to try it out on a mockup of the room. I thought perhaps I dismissed that idea too quickly, and I wanted to see what it might look like on the walls. And I have to admit that I really love it.
In fact, I like it so much that I really can’t decide which one I like better — the vertical lines or the horizontal stripes.
I’m going to finish up the wainscoting and paint the vanity today, so I still have time before I make my final decision. But by the end of the day, I want to have a plan. I promise that this will be the last time I present ideas or mockups of these walls. 😀 By the end of today, I’ll either be ordering more wallpaper to make up for the wallpaper that I previously used and then pulled off of the walls, or I’ll be heading to Sherwin Williams to purchase a ton of paint samples and painters tape. But it will be one of these three options for my studio bathroom walls. Feel free to weigh in, but again, if your opinion is, “It’s too busy!” or “That’s hideous!” just know that I’m okay with you sharing your opinion, but it will have no impact on my final decision. 😀
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Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
