Purple, Pink and Green Small Home Library Makeover

This purple, pink and green small home library makeover proves that even a room less than 10′ x 10′ can feel bold, cozy, and completely pulled together. With a full wall of bookshelves and enough room for a sofa and chairs, it shows how to make every inch count without feeling crowded. If you’ve ever struggled with a small room, this will give you plenty of ideas for adding bold color and smart layout choices that actually work.

Winters in Toronto are long, gray, and cold.  To help myself get through them, I usually take on “a winter” project.

This year the time has just flown past, because I tackled not one but two rooms — the living room and my home library. 

My home library is VERY small (10′ x 11′) which means space and function are super important considerations.

It is really difficult to find furniture that fits in the room. So if the pieces I already have are working, it isn’t worth the effort to replace them. (Plus it helps with the budget).

But some of them did need a face lift.

And I definitely needed more storage.

This room also doesn’t have any windows which means it’s pretty dark and I needed a way to bring in more light.

1 | The wallpaper inspiration

I always find some kind of inspiration to kick start my decorating project.

Sometimes, I fall in love with a rug or some fabric and go from there.

Other times I get inspired by a picture. 

This home library makeover started with my love affair with the HGTV ‘Global Spice’ wallpaper sold by Sherwin Williams. (Unfortunately, it is no longer available).

I saw it on an HGTV show and knew instantly that I needed to have it in my home!  It is boldly unique and yet sophisticated.

Plus it looks beautiful with all of the things I want to keep in the room:

• my pink and white striped sofa which is still in good shape.
• the pink, white and gold Capodimonte chandelier.
• my domestic cotton rug, purchased eons ago from Ikea which is quietly effective with the sofa, the chandelier, and the wallpaper because it has small bits of all of the colors in its design.

Fortunately since this room isn’t very big, hanging the wallpaper wasn’t a huge expense or effort. (The one benefit of really small rooms!)

2 | Paint The Woodwork

Next, I decided to paint all the woodwork, moldings, shelving and cupboards Sherwin Williams ‘Dewberry’.

It’s a very dark purple color that I used in my bedroom makeover and I love it! 

3 | Paint The Ceiling

As with most makeovers on a budget, this home library redo required a lot of painting!

After much deliberation, I decided that the original plaid ceiling needed to go.

And chose gold paint instead. It enhances the gold in the chandelier and makes it stand out in the room.

Because metallic paint does not cover well, I primed the ceiling with Kilz Primer* and followed with two coats of metallic gold manufactured by Protek (Metaltech gold base).  It applied well with a roller.

Note: It’s much easier to paint the ceiling before you do the walls since you don’t have to worry about drips. But I didn’t decide to do it until after the wallpaper was already up which is why it’s a little out of order.

Ceiling update:

I recently decided to go even bolder with the ceiling decor.

And covered it with fuchsia pink and lime green faux tin ceiling tiles.

I absolutely love it!

4 | Put up wall-to-wall bookcases

Of course, you can’t have a library without books.

So one complete wall of the room is covered with bookcases.

I painted them purple to go with the wallpaper.

And added mirror strips to cover the joins where the bookshelves meet. So they look like built-ins even though they’re not.

Adding lights to the top of them looks elegant and is another way to bring more light into the room.

5 | Install A Fireplace And Mantel

I think a fireplace adds a cozy ambiance to any room so I wanted one for my home library.

Since the room is so small, installing a gas fireplace was out of the question so I went with an electric one instead.

This electric fireplace* has the option of having a heater switch in case one feels a little chilly.

However the fireplace looked a little stark mounted on the wall like a picture.

So, with some help from my sister, we built a mantel around it and tiled it with small iridescent glass purple tiles that I found on clearance for a very good price.

I now have a surface for tea lights and a place to prop one of my favorite watercolor paintings, “April – Rupert Arm” by Gordon Henschel.

6 | Add Storage

One of the problems in my old house is that it has no built-in storage spaces. Closets were just not a “thing” when this house was built.

I really needed a place to put things like my vacuum cleaner that would be easy to access but out of sight when I wasn’t using them.

Which is where the mirrored storage wall came from.

It’s basically 18″ deep floor to ceiling shelves that cover the whole wall.

To hide what’s on the shelves, we installed mirror doors. Now there’s lots of out-of-sight storage space that still looks good.

As an added bonus, the mirror reflects light from the kitchen windows back into the library. Which definitely helps with the no window situation.

7 | Hang wall sconces

One thing that helps to save space in a small room is to get most of the lights off of the surfaces. 

That means installing more sconces and hanging lights than you might otherwise do.

I chose Candice Olson’s beautiful chrome, tapered wall sconces and had an electrician install them on either side of  the “Happy People” watercolor. 

He put them and the chandelier on dimmer switches, which gives me nice lighting intensity options. 

These sconces have small silk ecru shades and some bling in the form of a dangling crystal cube.  Love them!

I also had a little light hung above a wall statue. It makes her stand out and adds a little more light to the room.

8 | Slip cover the chairs

I wanted to introduce blue into the room to create continuity with my blue, gold and white living room that is next to the library (as you can see in the picture above).

Besides which, blue is my favorite color and makes me happy.

Luckily, the rug in this room has some navy blue in the pattern.

So I went with that color to cover the two antique hostess chairs.

I chose a blue and white cotton Ikat fabric that has a purple dot in the center of the ‘diamonds’.

The 4½” fancy purple fringe on the slip covers was carefully salvaged from the previous chair covers and reused on the new ones. 

I saved money by sewing the new covers myself, using the old covers as a pattern and attaching them to the chairs with velcro.

9 | Sew Cushions

I also made some cushions.

The small oblong purple lumbar cushions for the side chairs are self piped . The fabric is shiny and has a pattern of tiny diamonds.

The 2 blue and white diamond pattern cushions have a delicate pink and white piping.

I particularly like that they echo the diamond shape of the chair covers and small pillows on them.

A lumbar pillow and a large square pillow in pink raw silk tweed with fringe detail complete the cushion accents and give textural interest.

To learn how to make your own pillows, read our tutorial on how to sew cushion covers.

10 | Add Tables

I believe in order to make a sitting area comfortable, it is important to have handy surfaces to put down a cup of tea or a book.

The coffee table

The antique pedestal drum table sits in the middle of the room under the chandelier.

It’s taller than a standard coffee table so it can be easily reached from all seats. Which means I can get away with fewer side tables. Perfect for a small room!

It also has a small drawer where I keep tea-sized serviettes and coasters handy.

The side tables

The Eileen Gray glass end table* is adjustable in height, so slides perfectly over one arm of the sofa.

Which conserves space, is visually unobtrusive and very functional.

The metal garden stool between the hostess chairs is also very convenient, adds some textured bling, and has the important small footprint.

Since a lot of the elements in the room have a green detail, I painted the small round side table chive green.  

It is the perfect size for setting down the current book(s) you are reading.

The gate leg table

This narrow 10″ gate leg table that sits under paintings by Sibylle Rett, “Happy People” and Christine Koch, “Tablelands with Mackerel Sky” was a second hand find.

Gate leg tables are great for small rooms since they don’t take up much room when they are folded down.

But open up to a full size table if you want to use it for dining, doing a puzzle or playing a game.

Repeating the same color throughout the room pulls your eye in and helps the flow of the room.

So I painted the top of it green to match the smaller table on the other side of the room. (I told you there was a lot of painting in this room!)

The console table

Behind the sofa, I wanted a narrow table that would hold a lamp and a grouping of lady figurines, and I had a notion of something purple.

I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for at a reasonable price so I made one using acrylic tubes for legs and a ½” purple acrylic slab for the top. 

While this table looks okay, it is not very sturdy.  If I were doing it again I would use a thicker piece of acrylic for the top and put 6 legs on it instead of 4. 

In spite of the fact that there are many bold things in this small room, I love it and find it a relaxing serene place to be.  It just makes my heart sing.  After all is said and done, that was the main objective!

I hope I have been able to provide you with some insight into the makeover process and the confidence to follow your own instincts.

Have comments or questions about our tiny purple, pink and green home library makeover? Tell us in the section below.