Things That Go Bump In The Night

“What do you think..” I began tentatively as I flicked on mascara at my dressing table, Farrow and Ball paint chart spread wide in front of me, “of going dark in here?”
“We are not decorating this room again.” was S’s swift reply, made with definitive firmness even before I’d sounded my full stop. “We’ve not yet finished the house and you are planning to start it all again?”

Granted I probably hadn’t picked my moment.

In what is becoming a typical Sunday routine….and hour or so of leisurely bed-bound coffee drinking, book reading and biscuit munching leading into another hour of breakfast cajoling….a two-year old tummy by now being too full of biscuit to be able to accommodate egg…. it was in the following fifteen minute panicked rush accompanied by squeals from both S and I of “come on we’re late!” as we tag-teamed the getting ready of O for his swimming class with the finding of the swimming kit….often in one of three places -in the washing machine, buried amidst the ironing pile or still wetly rolled in a towel in the boot of the car – in which I chose to throw my curve ball.

“You used to have a dark bedroom…” I countered, “until I came along and painted it white.”
It had been gentlemans club red, decorated unintentionally with splodges of white from where he had, I think, then painted the ceiling.
“I was a bachelor” he said in explanation and the conversation was closed. For now.

The dilemma, in my head, is still very much open.

The bedroom, you see, is what design professionals might technically refer to as ‘a little bit bleurgh.’
Walls are painted in Dulux’s Just Walnut which is less walnut than you might think and more of a blue tinged pale grey barely discernible from an off-white. The furniture is handsome….a lovely oak bed, my prized G Plan dressing table sat upon a golden sanded floor and two new additions….schoolroom stools as bedside tables bought craftily a week or so ago under the premise of “going to the farm”. When I returned from said farm with four of the aforementioned specimens S realised that in actual fact I’d been going to meet an EBayer and the farm just happened to be nearby.
“They were a tenner” I said in explanation. “A lot less than the hundred or so quid for a bedside table in John Lewis to replace your cardboard box ….”
“Ludicrous.” S shuddered at the thought. Or maybe at me…..

But I digress.

Storage in the bedroom is plentiful…..a row of Ikea Pax wardrobes concealing a multitude of fashion sins within. And the window dressing pretty….soft white voiles with black out blinds behind for night time. Sparkle has been added with cushions, a beveled glass light fitting and, briefly, with the addition of a large and very heavy decorative mirror mounted behind the bed. The mirror remained in situ however for only a few hours. Snuggled beneath it last weekend, books in hand, S concluded suddenly that it may need a bracket or two more to be absolutely secure. Leaping from the bedcovers he proceeded to remove it from the wall propelled by the theory that if the mirror decided to go bump in the night the two people slumbering beneath it may not emerge well from the encounter.

So with the bones of the room in place but still no magic happening I’ve concluded a rethink is necessary and my solution to the current ‘take it or leave it’ feel of the room is to adopt the methodology utilised in the room immediately below it (the lounge) which I now love, and go dark and sultry as opposed to pale and (un)interesting. The question now is which colour….so its revamp may yet take awhile…….but the news that Abigail Ahern has a paint launch up her sleeve may well provide the answer. My contemplating continues…..

Moles Breath, Farrow and Ball

Stiffkey Blue Farrow and Ball

A Dark and Moody Makeover from Design Sponge

The new bedside stools

The mirror