Whimsical Elegant Dining Room

Re-Post from November 19, 2014:

SHOP OUR DINING ROOM!

I have to say that I am super duper pumped to be sharing my favorite room in our home today. I wanted to create a whimsical elegant dining room with a unique and colorful mix of colors and patterns. Drumroll please… Our Dining Room! I am a dining room kind of girl. Although it is the least used room in our home, I do believe that it is one room I cannot live without. A home without a dining room was a definite “no” during our home buying process. I just love that when you come in the front door, you are greeted by a room that’s beautiful, clean 363 days a year (we host Easter and Christmas), and a true expression of my design style from top to bottom. Since it is rarely used, I felt the need to go a little overboard. I mean why not?!?

Before

Above is an image from when we first purchased our home. It was a beautiful room before, just not my style. As you may have seen me mention on my Instagram page, I am NOT a fan of the color red so that was the first thing to go. The room had really great molding but the sheet-rock on the ceiling was in bad shape and the floors were extremely scratched and damaged.

Step One: Paint

Molding: Custom Mix of 1/2 Stunning Shade 1/2 Darkroom by Sherwin Williams

Lower Ceiling: Minute Mauve by Sherwin Williams

Vaulted Ceiling: CARDBOARD METALLIC by Sherwin Williams with a basecoat of CARDBOARD by Sherwin Williams

Step Two: Floors & Rug

Floor Stain: Minwax Jacobean Wood Stain

After our home was completely re-painted, we had all of our hardwoods sanded and re-stained much darker. As you may have noticed, I have a hard time “doing neutral”. I wanted a simple rug to offset the more colorful ideas I had for this room so I fell in love with this amazing rug. I love mixing patterns and I felt the geometric pattern was perfect to coordinate with the bird pattern wallpaper and watercolor ikat print fabric I had chosen for the room. Stay tuned for a future blog post on how to successfully mix patterns.

Step Three: Lighting

Choosing lighting is one of my absolute favorite parts of the design process. A gorgeous fixture can absolutely make an entire room. We have replaced every single fixture in our home and I adore the variety of styles we have in each room. I’ve always loved the look of sconces so we had two sconces wired into the back wall of our dining room before it was painted. I chose these beautiful gold sconces to flank the artwork I had purchased and they were the perfect size for the small space above the molding.

Step Four: Wallpaper and Furnishings

When I saw this delicious wallpaper by Julia Rothman, I had to have it. The print is called Daydream Green and it is available HERE. It is the perfect splash of color and whimsy for a typically formal space like a dining room.

For the furnishings, I found this amazing scalloped, tufted and nailhead trimmed bench as well as this watercolor ikat artwork. Those were my inspiration pieces for the room design. I then sketched out the design for our dining room table to be fabricated and installed. The table needed to be long and narrow and they fabricated an extra design detail to the ends as well. For the chairs, I searched high and low and found all of the additional chairs. Individual chair links are listed below. I wanted a unique combination of chairs and I love the mix of fabrics and wood tones against the stone table. For the pillows and drapery, I found these beautiful prints at Candy Kirby Designs. The purple watercolor ikat and purple plus sign print fabrics were actually baby blankets that I purchased and had cut down and sewn into two pillows for the end chairs and two for the bench. Finally, the drapery were a custom creation with Candy Kirby Design’s Watercolor Ikat fabric and Fabric.com’s White Linen fabric. I designed white linen panels with a border of the ikat print on the edges to add a touch of color and print without it being too busy against the wallpaper and molding.