The glowing dining room


During our time off over the holidays, I finally got around to painting our dining room. I had started playing around with colors over Thanksgiving weekend, and it took me this long to decide!

Initially I wanted to do something dark and dramatic, sort of like this dining room by Bryn.


But after seeing the large swatches of several dark blues & purples on the wall, we realized that a dark color might take away some of the bright open flow of our living room/kitchen/dining room (which all kind of make up one big L-shaped room). We didn't want to take the risk of losing one drop of our brightness - the sunshine we get here, and the mood it creates, is one of our favorite things about our home!

So, we decided to embrace the brightness and go GOLD! In my search for the perfect gold/yellow, I was trying to describe what I was looking for and my friend Girlie summed it up perfectly - Moroccan yellow! (when is Moroccan not the right answer for me? :)) Seriously though, Girlie's input helped me narrow down my sea of yellows (thanks Girlie!). I needed something that would glow in our sunshine just like it would under the moroccan sun.

Big swatches were painted on the wall once again to be pondered and analyzed at all hours of the day (with visitors asking, what's going on here - is it blue or is it yellow??). :) A decision was made...

In case you forgot or are unfamiliar, here's what it looked like before...

with our fabulous tablecloth from Mexico

And here it is now!



this beautiful runner is from thailand

New paint color meant new artwork arrangements, which I really had fun with. Ideally, I would like to have a huuuuuge mirror on the main wall of the room (on the right in the above pictures), but lacking the budget, I took different collections of small sunburst mirrors from other areas of the house and moved them here. The mosaic sconces are new - they were actually 'holiday' items at Cost Plus, marked 50% off (about $6 each) - love a bargain! The way the lights reflects when the candles are lit is really pretty. I'm a sucker for candles. I love them.

One thing I'm very excited about is how the bottom sunburst mirrors on each side actually hide electric outlets on the wall. I'd been wondering pretty much since we moved in how best to hide them (floating in the middle of our dining room wall!), and am VERY excited about this solution.


Below is a close-up so you can see what I'm talking about - you can actually still see a bit of the outlet plate on the bottom left, but I don't mind. I might find a larger mirror at some point which would cover the whole thing... but for now, this works! (I'm intentionally showing you this imperfect solution in an effort to counteract my perfectionism. It's therapeutic for me to show you this - helps me embrace it and realize that imperfect is actually okay! :))

And one last shot of our wall of mirrors...

It glows!

7 comments:

Lilac Barries January 11, 2011 at 7:40 PM  

I love it! I'm so glad you decided not to go dark, this just looks to good.

La Dolfina January 16, 2011 at 6:47 PM  

It's gorgeous... I think Girlie was right on the money on this one!!
I bet it brings a smile to your face.
Thanks for finding my blog as it brought me to you!!
I'll be back soon :)
xo

. January 17, 2011 at 11:13 AM  

Wow, the gold is stunning! What a remarkable transition :)

imanewcr8tion January 21, 2011 at 5:25 PM  
This comment has been removed by the author.
imanewcr8tion January 21, 2011 at 5:26 PM  

Katie....:)It has been a while since I read your blog. Thank God I finally had a chance to. I enjoy reading your post. Keep it coming! Your kitchen looks great! Can't wait to see it in person:)

imanewcr8tion January 21, 2011 at 5:30 PM  

I meant your dining room looks spectacular! Great pick on the color;)

V January 21, 2011 at 6:26 PM  

I love it! You have such a way with colors - things I would think of as risky for me to try really pay off in your talented hands.

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