Help me decorate this room (PIP)

[glitzy07]

We're in the process of turning one of our basement bedrooms (split level home), into a home office for me. We have removed wallpaper and just finished painting. I'm now working on putting the room back together and realizing just how bare and boring the room is.

Main concerns:
- I have a few wall hangings, which you can see leaning against the appropriate walls, but there is one giant wall that will be completely open.
- The floor in the middle of the room is completely bare. The carpet will be replaced in the entire basement in the next couple of months and will be a bit lighter. Is it weird to put an area rug in top of carpet, just for a pop of color?
- What color window treatments would you do?

Before removing wallpaper:


After paint:









We have some shelves that might go back up here, at leats one lower one to hold the printer, router, etc.

A few wall options I already have but might not work:


A fairly large mirrror handed down from H's grandma. It's taped for us to paint an as-yet undetermined color because we don't know where we want to use it.


Some canvases that a friend gave me when she moved. I feel like the colors are too bright for the cool wall color, but maybe I'm wrong?

[7costanza]

I would definitely put a rug down, most of my house has carpet and I have a rug in my dressing room/future nursery and I think it looks fine. I'm not much help with window treatments, I found a style I like and use it in every room because I'm lazy and not creative. It's the bamboo shade/white curtain look from Young House Love. The mirror might look nice painted white and hung over your desk. I'm not sure about the canvases but maybe someone more design savvy will chime in.

[Deleted]

I think a rug would be fine.

I feel like the wall color is too dark or the wrong shade or something.

I think that might be the wrong room to hang the mirror in.

Usually I decorate by finding an inspiration item to decorate around. Do you have anything you really like that you want to put in the room?

[theintended]

I'd consider painting the trim white, too.

[glitzy07]

Jan 11, 2013 20:41:00 GMT -5 @kcpokergal said:

I think a rug would be fine.

I feel like the wall color is too dark or the wrong shade or something.

I think that might be the wrong room to hang the mirror in.

Usually I decorate by finding an inspiration item to decorate around. Do you have anything you really like that you want to put in the room?

Sorry, the lighting sucks and so does my camera. The wall color isn't as dark as it appears here.

I do really like the two wall hangings that I plan to hang in the room, and would love to play off of them somehow. Here they are...





Note: Eventually we're hoping to remove the paneling all together and replace with sheet rock, which is why we didn't paint the window wood trim white as well. The rest of our house has wood trim and we didn't want to change it in one room since the white is just temporary. Not sure when that's going to happen though.

[Deleted]

Okay, that's a good place to start then:)

[stephm0188]

The paint color is fine. Bring in curtains or a roman shade on the windows to pull in my color. A rug will help. It's too stark as is with all the white and blue. I agree about painting the trim.

The prints are cute, but the scale is too small. They'll be lost on the wall hung on their own. Maybe consider some photo ledges with a few frames and decorative accents to add some weight.

The canvases your friend gave you are cute and would compliment the color well, but again, the scale might be too small.

[glitzy07]

Jan 11, 2013 21:07:02 GMT -5 stephm0188 said:

The paint color is fine. Bring in curtains or a roman shade on the windows to pull in my color. A rug will help. It's too stark as is with all the white and blue. I agree about painting the trim.

The prints are cute, but the scale is too small. They'll be lost on the wall hung on their own. Maybe consider some photo ledges with a few frames and decorative accents to add some weight.

The canvases your friend gave you are cute and would compliment the color well, but again, the scale might be too small.

Ooh, I like the idea of photo ledges. I hadn't thought of that. You're probably right that the scale is too small on the prints.

And I definitely need to figure out window treatments for some color. I'm just learning how to sew, so maybe I can find fabric I like and make my own.

Also I absolutely agree that it would look better with the trim painted but we're going to leave it as is for now because of the reason I mentioned above. Mostly because once you paint wood you can't go back.