After I shared my issues with the current studio wallpaper with y’all a couple of days ago, my mom (a Photoshop genius) volunteered to help me get the wallpaper just right. After reminding her that the wallpaper was going to go in my house (the house of someone who loves lots of color and pattern) and not in her house (the house of someone who’s not so crazy about lots of bright colors and pattern), I handed the original wallpaper image over to her to see what she could do with it. Here’s the original wallpaper image.
If you read my last post a couple of days ago, you’ll remember that it was mainly the dark purple flower that I had problems with, but that red flower was also a bit too much for me.
I really love the changes she made. She didn’t change it so much as to drain all of the life out of the wallpaper, but she did tone it down enough so that none of the flowers look like they’re glowing. And she did an amazing job at taking that one dark purple flower (the one that turns into a dark purple splotch when standing on the other side of the room) and adding some lightness and definition to it so that it won’t turn into a dark purple splotch.
Here’s the new and improved wallpaper:
So here’s a look at the two side-by-side, with the original wallpaper on the left, and the new and improved wallpaper on the right.
It’s still colorful and fun and vibrant, but I think the new one will play much nicer in the room.
So that you can see the difference, here’s the original wallpaper in its current size on the actual wall…
Here’s what it looked like on the mock up I did back when I was considering IKEA Pax cabinets, but the wallpaper is an actual photo of that wall…
And this will give you a pretty good idea of what the new and improved wallpaper would look like on that wall in that same scale.
It’s such an improvement, but as I was doing that mock up above, I kept thinking that it would be so much better if the flowers were bigger. That way (1) the flowers would be plainly visible from across the room, and none of them would turn into blotches of color when viewed from a distance, and (2) fewer repeats of the design would be visible, so the design wouldn’t look as busy.
I did a mock up using larger flowers, and….I LOVE IT!
I had actually wanted a design with the larger flowers from the very beginning, but I didn’t know of a place that would print such a design since it’s more of a mural and not your standard repeatable wallpaper. The only place I knew about where I could upload my own image is Spoonflower, and they only offer repeatable wallpaper printed on 24-inch-wide wallpaper. That means that the image you upload to Spoonflower will be repeated every 24 inches. That makes it impossible to upload and print large scale designs that don’t fit neatly into a 24-inch-wide repeat.
But in the time since I designed that original wallpaper and now, I’ve discovered my favorite wallpaper mural store — Photowall. That’s where I got the mural that I used in our recent bathroom remodel…
And they allow you to upload your own image, and they’ll print a mural from it. That means I won’t be bound by the 24-inch repeatable width of standard wallpaper, and I can make the design as large as I want it to be.
So that’s the plan. I have my image with the new and improved colors, and now I just need it printed much larger than the original wallpaper.
I also need to decide if I want to put the new design in the back entry. Regardless of what I decide, the green is going, as is the black and white design on the floor (that’s a firm decision, but more on that later).
But I just can’t decide if I want to carry the floral mural into the back entry, or leave those walls a solid color.
If I don’t do the mural on the walls of the back entry, I might have the design printed on fabric, and recover my desk chair with that floral fabric to bring the floral design into the “office” area of the studio. I came across this picture yesterday from Rifle Paper Co.’s Instagram account, and absolutely love this floral chair. I can image a desk chair covered in my bright floral pattern.
So I’ll probably play around with the size of the flowers on that wall just a bit more to be sure I have it exactly like I want it, and then I’m going to order the mural for that wall. I don’t need to make a decision on the entryway right now. I can always order that later.
I still haven’t nailed down the entire design for the studio and half bathroom, but things are slowly starting to come together in my head. I hope to have an overall plan to share with you very soon.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
I hope you’ll join me on my DIY and decorating journey! If you want to follow my projects and progress, you can subscribe below and have each new post delivered to your email inbox. That way you’ll never miss a thing!
