Guest Room Mood Board, Take 1: How [not] to Mix Patterns

Now that I’ve got guest rooms on the brain, I’ve been going crazy with Pinterest. Ok, who am I kidding – I’m always dying over the Pinterest boards! 🙂  But this time it really came in handy for research!

With walls,  four poster beds, and rental-friendly wallpaper checked off the list, the next step in creating the guest room plan  is to settle on some duvet covers and then fun textiles to use throughout the room.  I may just sew two duvet covers for the twin beds, but I took a peek at what West Elm and Crate and Barrel had to offer.  This Spring Floral duvet cover,  on clearance now at West Elm, caught my eye:

The darkest blue tone would tie in with the wallpaper, and the other blues and greens would mix things up – just what I want.   But when I imagined the duvet covers on the beds, in the room, I realized that the combo may have too much pattern and color all colliding in that small space.

So how do you test out a *very rough* design plan?  Make a mood board, of course! 

This is a very rough draft mood board.  When I paint a floor lamp it will be a warmer gold rather than a bold yellow, so that it ties in with my beloved Quatrefoil pillow.  And the two fabric swatches in the upper right corner are from Lauren Liess – but more about them in another post.

Looking at the mood board I thought it was too busy with the patterned duvet.  And this is where Pinterest becomes oh-so-handy for truly, actually doing RESEARCH!

I searched the site for images of patterned wallpaper in bedrooms.  I saved several to my board, choosing the images whose wallpaper was just as busy and in similar colors as the one I’ve chosen.

These are only a few of the images I saved, but I quickly noticed a theme.  When a bed is paired with a bold, graphic wallapaper, the bed is usually dressed in a simple white cover, or else in a subtle print or coordinating solid color.  At least in the rooms I liked the best.  And it seem especially important to keep the bed cover calm and simple if you want to dress up the room with fun colored accessories and throw pillows.

So I guess I’ll aim for a simple white duvet on each bed, and maybe will add a bit of a ribbon trim or something to dress it up a bit.  But before I can paint the bed frames or order a duvet, I need to order that Tempaper.  I want to be sure that the white paint for the beds won’t clash with the white in the pattern.