Guest Room Tour

Today I'm sharing images of our guest suite. I decorated this particular room well before starting Honey + Fitz and as I was getting it ready to host our Memorial Day weekend guests, I realized that I've never properly photographed it or shared it with you all. The room has an en-suite bath that I'll post pics of eventually.

My inspiration for the room was this guest bedroom makeover originally featured in Cottage Living magazine. When I saw this image, I immediately fell in love with the cheerful yet serene feeling and thought it would make a very welcoming space for our guests. It feels comfortable and really approachable - not overly decorated or too precious - but still pretty.

I set out to create a similar look, using the spa blue and sunny yellow color combination as my starting point. Here's how my room came together.

The bedding in the original room is all custom. I was able to create a similar look by using Pottery Barn's Matine Toile duvet and euro shams in marigold. The sheets are Fieldcrest Luxury in Grey from Target and the matelasse coverlet was a Home Goods find.

The one thing I did sew up was this little lumbar pillow.

No fuss, just a simple envelope closure with little white pom pom fringe to dress it up. It ties in with the curtains nicely. The insert is a 12"x24" lumbar pillow from Pottery Barn.

Speaking of curtains, the ones in the inspiration room were made to match the custom duvet. Since I went off the shelf with my duvet, I decided to do something different with the curtains and made them using this fabric (Slubby Basket in white) and edged them in a 3"wide band of this fabric (Waverly Essence in spa).

They are a great weight while still letting in filtered light.

I couldn't afford to create a custom upholstered headboard like they did in the original room but I still needed something to act as the focal point behind the bed. Instead I took 5 Ribba frames from IKEA, spray painted them with Valspar's Mediterranean spray paint in high gloss and framed some pages from this book.

The pages were much larger than the mat opening so a good bit of the design is hidden behind the mat but I don't really care. It actually gave me the freedom to move the print around and center what I felt was most interesting.

Instead of doing matching table lamps on the bedside tables, I opted for swing arm lamps. I wanted to leave guests with plenty of room on the nightstands for things like cell phones, water bottles and the general stuff you amass when traveling. I went with the Cortland swing arm lamp from Pottery Barn Kids in the oil-rubbed bronze (unfortunately discontinued it looks like). Don't neglect to look for stuff like this at "kids" stores. I was just buying the base and nothing about it says "kids" so I was able to get the look I wanted for less than it would have cost had I bought it from the regular "adult" side. I bought the shades at JoAnn Fabrics and used a little Fabri-tac to glue on some remnants of the same Waverly Essence in spa that I used on the curtains. I trimmed the edges in white hem tape.

One of the bedside tables in the room - a vintage find from the Raleigh Flea Market. I love the shape and the distressed, turquoise paint works nicely with the color palette in the room. The coral piece on top is from this eBay seller.

The other nightstand is an old Crate & Barrel piece that I painted (it started out black).

On it I keep a couple of decorative boxes I found at Marshalls and a book or two. I like to swap out the books I have on the nightstand by season. For summer, I always put out my most favorite summer book, One Special Summer by Jacqueline Bouvier and her sister Lee. It's filled with hand written notes and drawings from the sisters about their summer aboard the Queen Elizabeth and their adventures around Europe.

The room really has no interesting architectural features to speak of so I faked it by adding some trim moulding about 12" down from the ceiling all the way around the room. Sort of a fake picture rail. I painted it out in a high gloss white and then painted the ceiling and the 12" above the rail in Benjamin Moore's Ocean Air. The remaining wall below the rail I did in Benjamin Moore's Smoke Embers. This was pretty much an experiment as I wasn't sure if it would visually lower the ceiling but I can happily report that it totally does the opposite. The railing and the lighter ceiling color immediately draws your eye upward and gives the whole space a very airy quality that I love.

I am on a slow but steady mission to rid my house of all the terrible, builder-grade boob lights we have. But lighting is expensive so I had to figure out a way to cheat a little. I bought a drum shade with a spider top at Home Goods, covered it in some linen fabric and and sandwiched it between the boob light and the ceiling.

I will do a more detailed post on how I did this later in the week. The result as you can see above is acceptable, though the view from below is anything but fancy.


So what's left for this room?

#1: Lighting! This drum shade over boob light thing is only a temporary solution. I think I've decided that I want to do a Moravian star pendant in its place and have finally found a decent price on one here. If you know where I can get a 20" version of this light for less, please let me know!

#2: The entire wall opposite the bed. You know how I like to keep it real with you guys, so here goes. On the other side of the room I have this bamboo framed mirror that I picked up at Goodwill for $20.


I got as far as giving it a coat of Benjamin Moore's Twilight Blue which is like an inky, navy blue color. I don't know if it will stay in the room but for now it's perched in the corner because I haven't been motivated to hang it (it weighs approx. 900 lbs).

I also have this chest from my single days. It totally doesn't work in the room but it's in perfect condition and at the time I put the room together, I wasn't ready to get rid of it. Perched on top is my 22 year old Sanyo television (that is not an exaggeration).

I've been considering swapping out the chest for my campaign dresser which I'm thinking of painting ivory, a grayish blue (like the one used on the armoire in the original inspiration image) or coral. I know...you're like coral?? but I can't stop thinking about how hot it would look with the brass hardware).


Then maybe I'll put my vintage faux bamboo mirror over it and spring for a small LCD tv of this century for my guests.

That's all for now! Will report back when I wrap up these other items. 

UPDATE!! I actually finished this wall with the campaign dresser.  Here's how it turned out:  

See more of the dresser transformation here.