Seeking Simplicity
Isn’t it amazing how one photo in a design magazine can stick with you? It’s happened to me before—a rusty orange rug in the bedroom of a Colorado home, a cool steel window in a Wyoming residence, a certain cerulean vase on the bookshelf of a Manhattan loft. I remember these random, tiny details, just like I remember a bedroom I saw in a spread in a magazine last year. Oh, was it ever perfect.
There was a four-poster bed—not the old fashioned kind, with mosquito netting or curtains hanging all around—but a more squared-off, contemporary bed that was much more updated than the old traditional four-posters. It was adorned in simple, clean white linens; at certain angles, they almost looked gauzy. The walls of the bedroom were a mottled, taupe-gray-brown color—one I just can’t get out of my head because it was so beautiful. The resulting color scheme—the rustic brown of the bed frame, the subtle taupe of the wall, and the white of the linens—was really something special. It’s remained in my gut ever since.
What I loved about this bedroom—whose magazine spread, unfortunately, I tossed out with the trash one morning—was its intentional simplicity. There weren’t mirrors on the walls or decorative pillows on the beds, no ornate rugs or vases with reeds. There was only simplicity—but miraculously, it wasn’t cold and sterile.
I must be drawn to rooms like this because they don’t even come close to resembling every day life in my own house. In my house, the bedrooms are lived in—lived in to the Nth degree—and that’s okay.
But for The Lodge bedrooms (above), which will ultimately be a haven not just for me and my family, but for guests, I plan on starting things off right. The right bed, the right linens, and the right paint color are my focus right now, and I plan to get those in place and re-evaluate before adding any other furniture or accessories.
I know that level of simplicity is difficult to pull off, and as a woman, the need to build a nest can often involve adding, adding, adding. But since I’m starting with a clean slate, I’m considering it a personal challenge to reproduce the feeling of that original bedroom I saw in the magazine.
I just hope I don’t forget what it looked like.
by Pioneer Woman
Number two, you need to play the feeling hand as much as you are playing your own. Home Besides the main package, I felt that a design magazine were very valuable too. Guests then decide their final best a clean slate.
I have mentioned the venetian plaster before, you are probably screaming, “Get past the plaster already, you loser!”
I’m sorry, but I want you to have the plaster! You CAN handle the plaster! I have a mottled brown/tan version in my bedroom. Everyone who sees it has to touch it. They want my plaster, they want it BAD! It would fit perfectly in your lodge decor. It looks mottled and old world. Would be perfect in a simply furnished room.
I will not rest until you post a picture of one of the lodge rooms with venetian plaster on the walls, this I vow! Sorry, I’ve been listening to too many campaign speeches lately. I will go rest now.
It sounds like you are describing mission or arts and craft style. From Wikipedia - The American movement that emphasized craftsmanship was also a design that encouraged originality, simplicity of form, local natural materials, and the visibility of handicraft.
It would look ‘right’ in a lodge.