Headboard wall an iridescent glow

To give the headboard wall an iridescent glow, I cut square panels, painted them the same red and white pattern, mounted them about six inches from the wall, and placed little lights behind them. OPPOSITE PAGE: Taking my cue from Shawna, I wrapped paper around boards and hung them as art. When she walked into the room and realized I’d referenced her own decorating ideas, it put a huge smile on her face. That’s when I know that I’ve done my job. I’m not among those people who think you should buy art to match the furniture. I’m the kind of guy who buys art from the heart, then worries about how it’s going to look in my house later.
But that said, if you already own art that you love, why not design the room to showcase it or at least let it be your inspiration? The driving force behind the design of a room for a woman named Veronica Ginyard was her collection of carved masks, gifts she’d received from friends and family who’d traveled to Africa. Veronica is a lovely and incredibly strong woman, who extricated herself from domestic abuse and is single-handedly raising her eight children (including two sets of twins). At the time we entered the picture, the family was living in a small house with exposed live wires sticking out of the wall and mold from the constant flooding of their basement.
The place was really a wreck, and the kids were all crammed together in attic and basement rooms that were dangerous and stifling. While my goal was to display Veronica’s collection of masks to good effect, I also wanted to create a restful environment for this woman who had endured so much hardship. But, in some ways, those two objectives were at odds with each other: I could use only cool, neutral-colors, which would make the room, feel very quiet and peaceful, but if I did that, the masks, all of which are wood, wouldn’t have really popped off the walls in the way I wanted them to. So I came up with a compromise.
I kept most of the colors in the room neutral, then painted one wall a greenish- turquoise, which contrasted well with the dark wood of the masks but wasn’t so brash that it ruined the room’s low-key mood. To make the masks on the other wall stand out, I mounted them in shadow boxes, using the same green-tinged turquoise as a background. Since Veronica’s mask collection was fairly exotic, I chose a beautiful teak hardwood to make the bed and other pieces of furniture in the room. It’s the combined effect of these exotic wood pieces that gives the room its life and enabled me to keep everything else fairly unembellished.