Our new bedroom - gaining inspiration from on line shopping sites

As some of you may remember, Compostman has been refurbishing and redecorating our guest bedroom with a view to making it our bedroom. He has been very busy, rehanging the door, putting in new skirting boards, new flooring, he also did a complete repaint with a lot of preparation needed first as the plaster was so bad.

When we moved in to Compost Mansions we chose the smallest bedroom to sleep in, mainly because it had the chimney breast in and was the warmest room in an otherwise very cold house.  But it was rather cramped in there!

The guest bedroom is much larger and has two windows rather than just one and we always planned on moving in "eventually".  But "eventually" ended up being 16 years...

Well you have to think about things before you act, don't you?

Anyway, the room is finally completed, Compostman did a terrific job and we are so pleased with the result!

The colour scheme in the bedroom is similar to that which we chose ( after much argument discussion ) for the sitting room. With the wooden floor, furniture and doors the effect there was (in our opinion) really lovely - lots of earth tones. It was only after we finished that we realised the colour scheme was similar to one we had seen in an online paint catalogue!

Regardless, these are our favourite colours and we wanted a similar, warm, cosy effect in our new bedroom. Compostman and I discussed colour schemes but in the end we decided we liked the caramel/terracotta/chocolate theme so much that we would use the same colours again. And of course we still had lots of paint left over, so it was a thrifty move to make as well.

So in our new bedroom we have one terracotta wall,

the other three walls are caramel and we have picked chocolate coloured blinds for the windows. 

Obviously to turn a painted room into our new cosy bedroom I had a wish list of things we needed;  a bed, headboard, mattress, wardrobe, lighting fittings, several chests, new curtains/blinds and at least one bookcase (!) as well as blinds, a rug or two, a blanket chest and pictures, candles etc.

I did a lot of looking at various Pinterest boards and magazines and on line shopping sites to get ideas - there are lots of lovely things to look at, and I get a lot of inspiration from on line stores even if I don't buy that many items from them. I  always come away from an on line browse with design ideas for colour schemes - both for the house and in the garden.

After a good clean up and polish we re used our old wooden wardrobe and chests and with the new wooden floor the overall effect is pretty good, although I do say it myself :)  We removed the old carpet and took it away - we inherited it when we moved in and it was old, even then, but not in a good way.

We have moved our divan bed and headboard from our old bedroom - I would love to have bought a new bed, something like this Auvergne divan from Tempur which I spotted on the Olrids and Downtown on line shopping website. It is exactly the right colour to go in our new bedroom. But we have a perfectly good divan bed and headboard with a new-ish and expensive mattress, so sadly this lovely bed had to stay on the wish list of things I would like, but can't have. I have ordered a chocolate brown valance sheet for our divan bed, though it is a poor substitute.

Another thing on my wish list were blackout blinds - I got the idea to replace the (very old and rather faded) curtains with blinds when I was asked to review the Hilary's Web Blinds site and I realised just how much better blinds would be to shut out the light. I managed to find some blackout blinds in exactly the right colour chocolate from Argos. The old curtains have been washed and cut up for patchwork and rags.

The room had some old and very tatty down lights, which we wanted to replace so I was really pleased to spot the lovely down lights we now have, on the Homebase website , for an on line discount price. I have only recently realised that things can be cheaper if you buy them on line and then collect in store, rather than buy them in the store!

One item on my wish list was a rug and I saw one (again on the Olrids and Downtown site) which I was quite tempted to buy. Then I remembered I had a wool rug stored away in the loft which we inherited from Compostmans parents' house. I got it out and it was a very similar colour scheme and design (which is why I liked the on line one, I guess!) and it is just right for the room :)

There are still bits to put away and more pictures to hang on the wall, but we have been in our new bedroom for a week now and are very pleased with it. I do have a small amount left over from the budget and we would like another bedside chest so I may buy this one.

Or I may not, and instead put the money toward redecorating our old bedroom (last room and then we are finished, for now!)  or even towards fabric to make the log cabin quilt I have in mind for our bed in the new bedroom :)





The view from one of our bedroom windows.