It’s week 2 of the ORC and I am so excited to share the laundry room design plan with you. A quick recap if you are new here: The ORC is a biannual event that celebrates and encourages bloggers, DIYS, designers, and influencers to complete a room over eight weeks. Last spring, I renovated our office and this time around, I’ll be designing my mother-in-law’s (Darla) laundry room. Last week, I talked about the process I used to design the room with Darla. This week I’ll show you what we are actually doing.
The Concept Boards

As I mentioned last week, I started by creating three concept boards for Darla’s laundry room, each with a different feel and collection of elements. The first concept board is feminine and traditional. It has lots of warm tones and emphasized floral prints.

The second concept board is textural and natural. It focuses on casual living with a strong inspiration from the outdoors (gardening and animals). It has a vinyl grass-cloth wallpaper which would be subtle but elegant.

The last concept board was fresh and modern. It focused on geometric patterns and light colors. The furnishing/accessories are streamlined, but it feels playful with a capiz light and gemstone hardware.
Darla quickly decided that she liked board number 3 best. She specifically wanted the geometric wallpaper (more modern), nickel hardware (to match the rest of the house), and the light/bright interior. She prefers green to blue and likes natural woven materials, like wicker.
Armed with that knowledge and after a few more meetings to pick each element, we created a design board with the final selections.
Laundry Room Design Board – Final

Ta-da! Here she is! I know the design board feels a little underwhelming since none of the styling accessories are included. But this is the foundational layer of the room and I think it’s charming. I’ll go through the plan for all the elements so you can understand how they will be used.
We plan on installing beadboard at ~3/4 wall height with a thick decorative chair rail on top. I originally wanted to use a chair rail with a braided pattern (like the one above), but I’m not convinced. I am worried that it’ll feel a little out of place with the more modern aesthetic of the room (although good contrast never hurt anyone!) So we’ll see where we end up. The green geometric trellis wallpaper will be installed on the upper 1/4 of the walls. All the millwork will be painted a bright white, the same color as Darla’s current baseboards/moldings.
We’ll switch out her builder-grade boob light for this sophisticated semi-flush mount one. This light is very affordable but feels really nice. The bottom diffuser is glass and the extra decorative arms connecting the drum to the base create a nice moment. Darla has 9 foot high ceilings, so having a little space between the ceiling and the light is doable.
Her cabinets will get a couple of minor updates, too. First, we’ll install gorgeous handles on all the doors. Seriously, these thick nickel handles are heavy-duty and feel very nice in your hand. They are a little expensive ($12/pull) but worth the splurge. In addition, we’ll place large wicker baskets with lids on top of the cabinets to create extra storage and make that additional space feel intentional. The baskets are the one thing we did not order ahead of time. I was hoping to find some options locally. Darla and I plan on going on a bit of a shopping trip to (fingers crossed) find the perfect ones. However, the color tone of the wicker in the design board is ideal. It corresponds well to the floor and brings warmth since the room is on the cooler side with white paint and green patterned wallpaper.
The last element of the room is an indoor/outdoor green braided rug. The rug is durable enough to be used on a patio and should be easy to clean with a pressure washer. Remember, Darla’s laundry room is also her main entrance from the garage, so this rug will see a lot of action throughout the years. I particularly love that it has white, beige, and green fibers in the weave. We ended up ordering the larger size (2′ x 4′), so it would cover most of the floor.

I mocked up the room with the final elements, so Darla could visualize it. I ended up creating two versions, one with the wallpaper Darla picked (on the left) and one with a maze-like wallpaper (right). Darla really liked the maze wallpaper and wavered for a minute on how she wanted to move forward. In the end, she ordered both wallpapers, but the maze wallpaper will be installed in her dining room.
Laundry Room – Week 1 Progress
Our main goal for week 1 was to demo and prep the room for the wallpaper and beadboard. The first task at hand was removing the chair rail. We slid a small pry bar under the rail and gently pulled it away from the wall. Within a minute or two, the chair rail was down.
The trickier part of the demo was removing the peel and stick tiles Darla installed. As I mentioned last week, some were falling off the wall. That gave me a false sense of confidence. I thought, oh, I’ll just pull those babies right off. No harm to the wall. Easy Peasy.
Well, I was wrong in a big way! Some of the tiles, like the ones that kept falling off, were a piece of cake. But most of the other ones were, well, more difficult. We ended up using the mini pry bars on many of them to separate them from the wall and gently pull them off. About 50% of the tiles came off in pieces and around 75% damaged the drywall, usually just bubbling or pulling up the paper layer of the drywall.


The demoed room definitely did not look like much progress. With all the drywall damage, it was pretty ugly! We debated fixing the drywall but decided that it would ultimately be covered by beadboard and it didn’t make much sense. However, we offered to fix it in the future if Darla ever wanted to take down the beadboard.
The last task was to prep the walls for the wallpaper. Based on everything I read, I did not think we needed to prime the walls (the wallpaper directions never mentioned any type of primer). However, since this wallpaper is in the laundry room and it’s not my house, I decided that we’d prime the walls. Better safe than sorry!
We ended up using the Zinsser Shieldz Universal Wallpaper primer. We used a standard roller and nylon brush to apply it. The paint definitely felt sticky and had a slight odor (nothing too noxious). It only took ~30 minutes to complete the whole room.
Next week we’ll talk about wallpaper installation. And if you remember my wallpaper debacle from last spring, you may be wondering, did I order enough wallpaper? Will I ever learn from my mistakes? Come back next Thursday to find out!
Don’t forget to check out the other ORC designers and participants.
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8