Client Design Story: Modern Tropical Dining Room

Such a fun room + design! One thing I want for my clients is for them to walk into the newly designed/installed space and just feel happy. This design does just that. Let me walk you through this design and all of its intentional elements. First up, let's talk about what my clients asked for with this design.

What Clients Wanted: My clients knew they wanted one thing: a leafy, botanical wallpaper. They had also bought new mid-century modern lighting, so they wanted to make sure the design could incorporate that style. They wanted to use this space to entertain for holidays, so I needed to keep that in mind.

Something else I had to keep in mind is that this Reading Room (which happens to be the first official room I designed with my business) is visible from the dining room. Because this room has a large percentage of black, I knew I'd need to incorporate this color into the dining room design in a few areas--only this time with the opposite--a small percentage of this color for the adjacent space.

First, though, I wanted to design everything around the wallpaper selection, since that's the one thing my clients asked for. This would be the hardest decision because we wanted to find *the one.* Here are some of the wallpapers we considered for the project.

Once we decided on this wallcovering (left), we could move forward with the rest of the selections. Remember, I had the black to incorporate and I also wanted some natural materials to complement the leafy, tropical vibe of the wallpaper. Here's how I incorporated specific elements into the design:

Black elements: table base, light fixtures, sideboard/buffet, dining chairs

Natural elements: cane on the chairs and sideboard, pampas grass, jute rug

Mid-century modern elements: light fixtures, chairs, mirror

The sideboard was really fun to style. Whenever I style something, I go for a minimalist- simplistic- decluttered look. I want just enough pieces to look styled, finished, and intentional, but I'm very careful not to overdo it.

I incorporated this piece into styling the sideboard, and it's one of my most favorite pieces ever. The artist's name is Emily Ruth, and I'm obsessed with her "sentiments" pieces that are all in this style.

the design + moodboard we ended up with

This is how the room started, our "before" picture.

How the design turned out, our "after" picture. If you want to see all of the photos Kim DeVilbiss took for this project, check them out here.

I hope you enjoyed seeing the process of this client design story from start to finish. It's so fun to share all the details of my projects.