bedroom living room and dining room combo
hi there, i’m claire jefford, principal owner and decorator at creating contrast designs. we’re here in my clients’ toronto home in high park. my clients are in their mid-30’s, and are bothprofessionals working as engineers. when i first met with my clients the rooms were basically unfurnished, there were only a few piecesthat they had. so we really wanted to fill in the space, make it their own, and give it some personality. the inspiration for the design really came from my clients’ love for the industrial look. the structural changes that we made within the space really were,first of all, with the fireplace that you see behind me. there used to be old, red brick on the floor, so i recommended that we takethat out and that we make a really nice accent tile right there by the old wood burning fireplace. we also updated the wood mantle as well, and took off a bit of a wood lip that was across the back, just again to give it a nice, clean look. so the other idea i hadfor this space was to create this bench seat that was in the front window of the house, in the living room. it really did call out fora custom bench seat —â it just fit really nicely in between the two
walls, and what we did was we also added pot lights within thatspace, and we put the switch on the wall right next to the bench seat so it was very easily accessible. so window treatments are really important to me when i’m designing a space, and here specifically, when i first came onto the scene, my clients had a little cafe curtain that was just halfway down the window. there is a school opposite, so it was really important to have a little bit of privacy, and be able to have a treatment on it that could obviously, open and close as they needed. so this was an older home that had some really nice architectural features that we wanted to take advantage of, and one of those, specifically, was the really beautiful wood frames that you see around the doors and around the windows. it’s really chunky and it really adds character to the space. so one on the things i love..is i love playing with pattern. we have a lot of patterns within the custom pillows that we did, as well as in the area rug that you see on the floor, and these chairs that i’m sitting in right now. these are really beautiful and actually one of the main focal points of the space that people
always comment on — they just love them. the dining room has this really cute little niche, and we decided there to pop it with some color and create some contrast, and also keep the plate rail that was across the top, and keep that the white color, which is the same color as the walls, but have it pop off of the hale navy by benjamin moore, which is colored in the niche, as well as on the ceiling. so the bar area in the dining room is super functional, we actually had these reclaimed wood pieces that we purchased, and they hold the wine bottles and the liquor bottles as well, and underneath they hold the glasses upside down —â they not only look good in the space but they are actually serving a purpose. and then, we actually found the piece underneath, the buffet, it had a concrete top, and the wood again just worked beautifully with the tones that we had in the room, and it fit perfectly in the space, so that was like hitting the jackpot. to personalize the space, it was really important for my clients to incorporate some of the photography that they had taken on their travels. so we did this in the dining room, i recommended that we get all the same size black frames, and that we use white
mats to keep it nice and clean, and then do a gallery wall of art on either side of the niche. my clients actually already had the industrial pendants, but they just hadn’t hung them yet. so we love this idea of putting them over the table — it worked really well, obviously with the table and the chairs that they had, and then my suggestion was also to take a plank of wood to mimic the table and put that in the ceiling, and that is what the three pendants hang from, and i just think it looks pretty cool. my clients are really enjoying their space and that always makes me so happy to hear. she even said that as she comes down the stairs and she looks into the room, she can’t believe that it’s her house. and i’m just so thrilled that they love having friends here, that they really feel it’s a place that they have embraced and call their own, and that i was able to make that happen for them.