Our Dark Grey Bedroom was the star of our Home in 2017.

29/12/2017

Our dark grey bedroom is over 1 year old already but in 2017 it became the star of our home. It appeared in this months edition of Woman and Home and in October appeared in Maigret a dutch magazine very much like our version of Living etc.

They included my blog as one of the best interior blogs! Alongside some other blogs that I read and admire.

Maigret Living

Woman and Home Magazine December 2017.

It is still available to buy everywhere!

Our Dark Grey Bedroom The Details:

Photo credit Colin Poole for Photoworld

We matched the colour from an old piece of old pottery. Therefore I cant give you any colour details apart from the fact that it is a Dulux trade paint. Yes it is very grey, but more blue, less brown, very warm, rich, dark and matte.

Georgian Rustic Style:

I knew exactly what I wanted for our bedroom. It needed to be a calm, cosy sanctuary, a retreat from the bright white and colours that feature throughout the rest of our home. I wanted what I call ‘Georgian Rustic’ as the style theme. Have you ever visited an old early Georgian town house? There are lots in the city of Bath and our own small town is Georgian. Plain and simple but rich elegant at the same time.

‘We’ ( Marc) started by stripping, sanding and measuring. Preparation is the key to everything.
He put up a picture rail, using a laser beam, in this way we discovered our door frames were not straight. I wanted everything painted the same colour, in this way the room is not broken up, if the ceiling had been white, the room would have looked smaller and less pulled together. it was a risk but it works perfectly.

Wardrobes

We have modern fitted wardrobes with faded white doors, they were horrible. So how to overcome them and make them fit into my Rustic Georgian theme without a costly replacement? Easy, as they were paneled we painted them, using rollers, so no brush marks. I then bought some beautiful, but expensive, leather handles from Anthropologie. Sorted.

Lighting.

I have always liked our flat, wooden lamp shade, bought from habitat about 9 years ago. I wanted to keep it, but I also wanted it to blend in with the rest of the dark grey bedroom style. Marc used some industrial fittings to rewire the whole thing, we then painted it in the same colour as everything else and bought a large led filament light bulb. Small cost, high impact.

Photo credit Colin Poole for Photoworld

Bedside Lights

For the bedside lights we knew exactly what we were going to use. Two wall mounted vintage, turquoise Anglepoise lamps (type 75) Marc had restored both a couple of years ago. At last they had found their true home. Wall mounted lights also free up space on bedside tables.

The handmade bed

It has a post of its own, there are tree branches and palettes involved…

Handmade and designed by us all from recycled materials. You can read all about the details and how it was made in this previous post here. We love it.

Photo credit Colin Poole for Photoworld

The Doors

We decided that if anything had been left white it would been highlighted and turned into a feature. I wanted the things in the room to be a feature not the doors! This mainly applied to the door to the en-suite bathroom. So we painted it and hung an old canvas oil painting on the back of it. A clever way to almost disguise a door dont you think?

Photo credit Colin Poole for Photoworld

Furniture

We wanted to keep the furniture to a minimum, after all bedrooms are for sleeping in right? However bedside tables are a necessity. Mine is a treadle sewing machine from the 40’s and Marc’s is a sewing cabinet with a lift up lid and a tiny draw for storage. We painted it and fixed a pretty glass handle from Anthropologie on it.

Marc has a large vintage cabinet with drawers for storage, this was a local charity shop find and cost £20. The TV also sits on top of this and although I’m not a huge fan of TV in the bedroom, come wintertime, nothing beats a cosy early night in bed tucked up with a dog a cat and a good film. (it must my age)

I have a shoe cupboard for my winter shoes, it lights up and creates some beautiful ambient light in the evening. Beautiful and useful? tick. More details in this post here

Photo credit: Colin Poole for Photoworld

The only other piece in the room is my vintage sewing mannequin. Bought from a Georgian house clearance, perfect, she is usually strewn with my outfits from the previous week, but in this pic she looks quite presentable!

Artwork, Vintage Oil paintings on Canvas

I wanted old oil or watercolour original paintings. Not prints in this room as they would look too modern, We bought the paintings in this room for under £5 pounds each, all from local charity shops and boot fairs. The deer antlers above the TV we found in a field, they are not a matching pair but Marc cleverly made a wooden shield shaped mount for them.