progress where we sleep

Bedrooms are where so many of us spend the biggest portion of our time at home, it's where we start and set the tone for the day every day, and it's where we look to unwind after the end of a long week. And yet, for far too many of us, decorating the bedroom is an afterthought.

Lest we even think about making our new bedroom an afterthought, the previous owners did us the favor of leaving us with a faux finished burgundy wall. If you'd known me for more than five seconds, you know I looked at that and said, "Paint brush, please!"

I know that home improvement shows have made it so cliche, but I view my bedroom as a relaxation cocoon (notice I did not use the words "sanctuary" or "zenlike" -- pet peeves!). I want it to feel tranquil, airy and not busy for one second. Our bedroom in LA gives a pretty exact vision of what I mean:

It took about two years for all of the elements of that room to come together, and to get the color palette right, and now we love the soothing, textural monochrome feel.

Our Truckee bedroom came with lots of pine in the architecture, from a pine vaulted ceiling to pine wainscoting and a pine window seat. There's no ignoring that, my friends. And painting it all would violate the spirit of the mountain house. Thankfully, the House Beautiful "Colors for Your Home" book advised me that a particular set of colors from Benjamin Moore, most notably November Rain, would work really well with pine. And, as luck would have it, November Rain was right in the color family of the other colors we'd already selected for our home: Swiss Coffee, Halo, Hazy Skies and Victorian Garden. Yippee!

Bonus: I got to keep enjoying a 90s rock flashback, singing "November Rain" the whole time we (mostly Mark) painted the room.

As I already shared, Olympic Premium's primer is a joke (despite the paint from the same line being perfectly acceptable), so we switched to our trusty low-VOC Kilz to cover up this dark red. Even with all the pine wainscoting, the highly-textured walls still drank up an entire gallon (CORRECTION: Mark just reminded me that it was TWO gallons) of November Rain (color matched to no-VOC Olympic) in just two coats. (A gallon a coat in a pretty small room!) Thankfully, that was enough to get great coverage.

The room isn't even close to "done," but it's already a mellow, relaxing place to be, thanks to the neutral walls, muted green duvet cover, and lack of busy pillows or artwork. Loving it so far, but can't wait to make it even better!

The bed is Edland from Ikea, and the mattress is also from Ikea. The model is the "Sultan Holmsta," a firm combo of springs and foam, and it's dreamy to sleep on. Plus, it's really thick, so it makes the bed super tall to climb up into, making us feel like little kids in our playhouse, which is basically what we are.

Here's the window seat which I can't wait to adorn with a cushion and lots of pillows. It was my dream all through childhood to have a window seat for afternoons full of reading, and now I get one that's sized for two. Talk about dream house!

What's your preferred mood for the bedroom? Do you also like something with a relaxed-to-the-max vibe, or do you like something more energetic that makes you pop right out of bed in the morning?

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xoxo,