My small master bedroom is furnished with simple, light-colored maple pieces. Their style can best be characterized as nondescript.
Is it possible to give the room a more serene and modern look while keeping this furniture? The room contains a small lounge chair that could be re-covered.
You can achieve the look you want simply by taking the room in the direction already established by those light-colored pieces. Put a white slipcover on your lounge chair, for starters. And then buy an upholstered headboard, perhaps box-tufted, in the same or similar fabric as used on the chair.
Changing the carpeting would significantly affect the room's appearance. I recommend a pale variation of celadon green. You could also add some accessories, lamps and accent pieces in white and celadon green. Any metal you might wish to introduce should have a silver finish.
A modern bedroom design in the color combination I've just described could include a wall covering aptly called "Serenity." Its snowflake pattern in silver and celadon green, from Graham & Brown (grahambrown.com), would make even the most mundane furnishings look fresh and up to date.
Some new acquisitions will be needed to give your master bedroom a more stylish appearance. But updating a setting usually doesn't require huge investments.
In addition, an expression of one's personality is viewed in our era as a perfectly acceptable style all its own. Thus there are many ways to produce either a colorful or a subdued look and still be counted among the trendy.
Rita St. Clair is a Baltimore-based interior designer. Readers with general interior design questions can e-mail her at rsca@ritastclair.com.
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