Apartment Therapy’s 2014 Room For Color / Colour Contest

I was definitely more than a little excited when I saw my bedroom had made it into Apartment Therapy’s annual Room for Color contest. And I have to admit to being more than a little obsessive about tracking every vote myself and my competitors fellow home décor enthusiasts have received. Living in Canada qualified me for the International Division, which makes it all sound very exotic! There are currently five rooms competing and I managed to hold second place for a few days, but was recently knocked down by Johanna’s “Belgain Summer” room. Contest closes October 3rd so there’s still time to move back up to second (and then work on first place!). If you haven’t yet, I would very much appreciate a vote! A quick and painless sign-up is required, but worth it :) Another exciting result of the Room for Colour contest was a retweet of my entry from my new favourite Twitter account, Potter Barn Teen, aka PBTeen. Despite being well out of my teenage years, they do tweet some great content and I was / am honoured to have been recognized by them! My bedroom is probably my favourite space in the apartment, and one of the most enjoyable places to spend reading a book or perusing the internet (despite having a very weak signal in there…) My previous apartment was on the ground floor and two feet from a fence that blocked most of the sunlight from both windows, so I was pretty thrilled to wake up to sunlight streaming in through the window my first morning after moving in. 
When decorating the room, my goal was to create a calm and relaxing space. The west-facing wall is a deep teal / blue colour called Plumage, Martha Stewart Paints collection (available at Home Depot), it was the perfect colour to ground the space and create that ‘relaxed’ feeling. To carry on with the ‘relaxed’ theme, I wanted the bedding and pillows to be simple and opted to keep it entirely in blacks and whites—to save money, I simply switched out my current floral throw pillows with the black and white checked ones in the living room. I had written about the nightstand in a previous post, the yellow was a bit of an impulsive choice, but being a fan of colour, I wanted something that would be a great contrast, and add some interest to the space. The downside to this second-hand nightstand was that it doesn’t have any drawers or hiding space for clutter. That meant keeping things neat and tidy with a stack of my favourite colour-coordinated books along with a few that were next up on my reading list. The pink dresser was another second-hand piece I had written a post about, it was also painted on a bit of a whim and was initially intended as a storage piece for inside of my closet. However, once it was painted, I loved it too much to stuff into a closet and instead added another pop of colour to the space with a coordinating arrangement of some prints (the Mayan Calendar I had purchased a few years ago while vacationing in Mexico and the Pink Grizzly Bear was a gift from my sister) an antique mirror my parents had bought at an auction 15 years ago (recently painted white) and my gold initial from Chapters Indigo.