Before and After: This Blank Slate is Now a Cozy Bedroom
In this photo, this little French bedroom appears to simply be a blank slate, but according to its new owners, “Everything was old and ugly.” Five months of DIY weekends later, this room is now cozy, dramatic… and double-decked!
The bedroom has gone from plain white to an incredible blue. This paint—Farrow & Ball’s Hague Blue—is the perfect blue for a bedroom; it’s deep and inky like the night sky, while perfectly white linens pop against it like stars. Nathalie of Regards et Maisons, who is responsible for this renovation, is pleased with the results:
The room is cozy now. The alcove painted in dark blue under the mezzanine reinforces the intimacy of the sleeping area.
What’s this about a mezzanine? Why did I use the word renovation to refer to what looks to be a simple paint job? What’s that ladder doing there? Let’s take a step back to view the room as a whole.
Here we can see that this was a major undertaking, with walls being taken back to the studs and ceilings ripped out. Nathalie starts off the explanation of the renovation process with the dreamiest first sentence ever:
We bought this small apartment in the south of France for holidays and to receive guests. We renovated it with a small budget and a lot of second hand material and furniture. Everything was old and ugly and we wanted to make a nice contemporary and comfortable apartment. Walls and ceilings were broken and we remade the floor, electricity, plumbing, and insulation.
For the whole apartment, the renovation lasted 5 months because we worked during the weekend. And professionals realized the electricity and plumbing.
This level of renovation on an entire apartment, just on the weekends, in only five months? That seems like an impressive timeline!
This looks so amazing. The floor is gorgeous, the extreme ceiling height is luxurious, and the sleeping loft adds architectural interest without adding visual noise.
Now that we can see the whole space, I love the way the dark blue stands out against all of the other white walls, creating the effect of a fabulously oversized headboard. I also really like the use of two tones of wood: the light wood of the crossbeam, frames, and nightstand drawer, and the darker wood of the floor and ladder. It’s a clever design move that adds depth and is more budget friendly since it adds flexibility.
That ledge is such a cool feature; it adds display space without interrupting the stretch of blue, while creating the illusion that all of the decorative items are floating. The nightstand does something similar, nearly disappearing while the drawer and accessories pop.
Thank you, Nathalie and Regards et Maisons!