Our first time seeing the room in 2020:

***This was the room when we bought the home in 2020! The brick fireplace you see in the after photos is the fireplace with the red mantle, and the the stairs were completely removed.***

Our first renovation of the garden apartment:

***This is what we renovated it to two years ago—just a plane ol’ white room with some cute furniture and decor.***

How it looks today:

Our first project of 2023! Ok technically this was our last project of 2022 but the * finishing touches * happened this week.

If you’ve been following along, you know we’ve been renovating the New Orleans house for the last two years and that the kitchen renovation was our last big project. Now that we’ve gotten the big stuff out of the way, we’re taking the time to focus on parts of our home that are lacking the pizazz we oh so desire, and one major place was the garden apartment bedroom. We renovated this space early on and we were really just aiming to get it done and ready to sleep people—not necessarily to be a showstopper. So we did a very minimal design with all white walls and ceiling and let the chimney and shelves Matt built be the stars of the show.

With the house mostly done though, this room’s minimal nature started to feel like an afterthought that didn’t match the energy of the rest of the home. Neither of us was terribly excited about the space and if there’s one thing we want from our home it’s to feel inspired and energized by every room in some unique way. So it was time for a makeover!

To make this room fit with the rest of the home, it needed a little color. Or a lot of color. But nothing too straightforward. We knew we wanted to use color blocking to bring multiple colors into the space for a thoughtful, layered effect. If you’re a little design risk-averse, guest rooms are a really fun avenue to go bolder than you may in your own bedroom, since you won’t need to see it every single day and guests will usually get a kick out of being surrounded by an eye-catching design for their stay.

***Beyond the bedroom are the full kichenette and bath.***

We used a simple chair rail trim at one-third the height of the room to section off the green portion, and then a picture rail trim a couple feet below the ceiling to section off the yellow. If you haven’t installed trim before, it’s very easy and delivers such a big visual impact. Lightweight styles of trim like these can be done just like our picture frame molding tutorial—using construction adhesive and a brad nailer to attach, and paintable caulk to seal the seams!

We painted the bottom portion of the room Rookwood Dark Green by Sherwin Williams. The green has a really lovely grounding effect on the room and helps define the space, which is a nice touch in such a small area. For the yellow shade up top, I originally used a much brighter and more saturated yellow that you might find on a school bus. I was about halfway through painting the ceiling when Matt staged a necessary intervention and insisted we go with something a little more subdued, and so we settled on Gilded by Behr. It’s a golden leaning ochre that is much more relaxing than the first option—its happy but mild, like someone who’s taken a teeny bit of Xanax with their chenin blanc (not medical advice).

Our friends PJ & Thomas were our first guests in this room and said a few times how much it felt like its own private, secluded space apart from the rest of the home. The phrase “boutique hotel” even got thrown around, which was the goal, so I’m very happy! We don’t currently have the apartment available for rent—maybe someday!—so instead we just use it for friends and family who are visiting us or just need a place to stay while in town. There’s a passthrough between this apartment and the main house if our guests want to be a part of the household, or a separate entrance and a full kitchenette if they’re hoping for a little more alone time

Thanks for stopping by the blog today, I loved putting this project together and hope you like it too. You can scroll a little further down for links to some of the products we used here :)