Room of the Week: Colleen Knowles, Colleen Knowles Interior Design

Category: Bedroom

Designer: Colleen Knowles, Colleen Knowles Interior Design

Location: Mercer Island, WA

Goal: A Mercer Island couple was looking to update their master bedroom “with a polished, contemporary aesthetic and a dash of midcentury modern,” notes interior designer Colleen Knowles.

Inspiration: The owners wanted the master to reflect their sophisticated personal tastes, and mesh better with the simple but elegant style of the rest of the home.

Breakdown: “It was hard for the owner to pinpoint what did not feel right about the room but I immediately realized that the scale and proportion was off,” Knowles says. “Deep-toned Kneedler Fauchère grasscloth was installed on the headboard wall to give the room more ‘architecture’ and create a comfortable place for the bed to sit. The ceiling was rather tall for the size of the room, so to provide a focal point and fill the volume of the room I selected a modern chandelier [the Tod chandelier, available through CKID] to hang above the bed.”

Custom linens from CKID rest on a custom mohair-upholstered bed. The ikat-inspired duvet cover brings a large dose of pattern to the room, but the soft green color keeps it from overwhelming the rest of the décor. “The pink wool pillow is my favorite ‘pop’ as it is a calming color and ties in with the spring-blooming rhododendrons outside the French doors, which are so much a part of the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest,” Knowles says. Bebop, the owners’ dog, who loves to be photographed, sits in front of the French doors.

Tips to Get the Look: When it comes to designing any space, Knowles reminds us to go back to the basics: proportion, scale, balance, and focal point. Here, she breaks it down using this project as an example:

“The proportion of the height of the room needed to be brought into alignment with width of the room. The scale of the furniture needed to be in keeping with the height of the walls. The balance of the matching bedside tables and lamps is beautiful. The light fixture gives a strong focal point, both day and night. When working with a more neutral palette, you can add interest to a space using texture, variation in shade, and a variety of materials. Without strong color, those elements come to the forefront.”

Image courtesy of Michael Jensen Photography.