For those of you who don’t know – we bought our first house in January of 2020! We’ve been slowly trying to add our own personal touches to the space but with a newborn that is proving to be challenging. One of my favorite spaces that we have created so far is our Master Bedroom.
I really wanted a space that felt ‘clean & calm’ – our bedroom is where I go to unplug from a hectic day. My goal was to have something that felt like a cave that was surrounded by comfort but a spa that was relaxing. The inspiration for this room came from a photo(below) that I found in a Home Decor Group on Facebook.
We faced a few struggles along the way but here is the basics of how we got started!
We have extremely high vaulted ceilings in our master bedroom so I wanted to elevate the beauty that they brought to the room. The idea of a having a shelf to display artwork or photographs was something that I wanted to incorporate into our room but I wanted something different than just hanging pictures on the wall.
In addition to all of that, I knew that I wanted a darker color on the walls to create that Cave like space. To be honest – I was afraid of putting a darker color anywhere else in our home so I figured our room would be a good ‘test’ spot.
Picking A Paint Color
Picking a paint color was fairly simple, I didn’t want anything ‘too black’ but wanted something more of a gray hew since our existing headboard is gray We shipped ALL of our furniture from San Diego- needless to say it wasn’t in our budget to buy all new furniture. Solution? Create a trendy space based off of the furniture we already had.
We went to Home Depot and picked up a few paint swatches. I initially wanted to go with a color that was a little lighter but when I did a test swatch on the wall, there wasn’t a dramatic difference between the color I wanted and the headboard. We ended up going with the color ‘Limousine Leather’ and had to do two coats to achieve an even color.
I painted the halfway up the wall – leaving about 2 inches below the window. My goal was to avoid having to do any touch up paint of the white above where the shelf would go. Our room honestly stayed this way for about two weeks before we started the next step. Life with a newborn is challenging!
Wood Details
We did the shelf in three different sections (thirds) for two reasons. One, we wanted the shelf to be able to hold some weight so we needed the opportunity to put a few anchors and brackets to the the wall. Two, I didn’t want the two pieces of wood to meet in the middle of our headboard just in case it didn’t line up perfectly flush.
The wood we used for the shelving was just simple 2×4’s – we cut the boards to our desired length. Joshua sanded and stained the boards, then did a light sanding again after they had dried to bring some extra wood grain detail to the boards. Because of the weight of the shelf we use a few dry wall anchors while attaching the shelf.
Next we boxed out the wall & added a trim layer. We added a thin strip of wood under the shelves, in the corners of the wall & along the bottom molding near the floor. I highly suggest painting these pieces before you install them – this will give you nice crisp lines! After we boxed out the bigger area we had to decide how far apart we wanted the vertical pieces to be. To measure this we started from the middle and worked our way outwards.
Originally we thought that we wanted the pieces 18 inches apart but once we actually saw it laid out, we thought it was a little too busy against our tufted headboard. We ended up spacing the vertical slats 36 inches apart.
Tip:
Start your measurements from the middle & edges. Work each half of the room as its own space. You want to make sure that when you are working your way to the edges that you aren’t left with odd spacing because you forgot to incorporate the end vertical strips.
Finished Product
We added additional brackets under the shelf for extra support and purposefully lined the brackets up with the vertical strips so they would blend in & not be noticeable. My inspiration photo had pictures frames resting on their shelf and it looks as if they did some nature prints . . . which isn’t really my style. I wanted to add some ‘texture’ in our room without actually having a ton of items in there.
I found a few beach themed digital images on Etsy that had a muted coloring that I thought would go perfectly with out gray theme. I was able to add ‘texture’ in to our room with prints of different leaves, water, beach grass & palm trees. I printed the photos via Shutterfly & grabbed these basic black frames to hold the images. I also added a little bit of greenery to liven up the space a bit.
To say that I am happy with our focal wall is an understatement! This was a really easy way to customize this space without having to redo a whole entire room! I’m thinking about also doing a focal wall like this behind our TV in the living room. I will keep you guys updated on that project too!
Disclaimer: Blog post may contain affiliate links or codes.
Want More Content Like This?
Other Posts You May Enjoy . . .
Leave a Reply