Our Moody Modern Vintage Master Bedroom Reveal!

A plain, dated master bedroom gets a modern vintage makeover with moody black paint, modern textures, vintage style furniture, and budget DIY projects.

It’s finally DONE! Our “moody modern vintage” master bedroom finally came together after almost 3 years of trial and error and I finally feel like it clicks.

By the way, total PSA: It’s okay if you don’t get your room just right the first time. Ask our breakfast nook; it’ll tell ya. Home wasn’t built in a day.

Remember when we first moved in back in April 2017 when our master bedroom looked like this?

Then, Robert and I found a stunning bedroom set on a massive markdown at a local home furnishings shop one day, and we just couldn’t walk away.

So we slapped the same paint color on the walls that we’d had in the master bedroom at our last house and hoped for the best. Not the best idea, just so you know.

Because while the wall color does look like a pretty cool-toned light gray in the photo above, it ended up having green/yellow hues that drove me crazy against the already warm/yellowy light wood furniture.

So we experimented with a dark focal wall behind our bed to see how we felt.

And then we instantly fell in love and did something I thought we’d NEVER do.

We painted our entire bedroom black!!! The name itself is called Rebel by Kilz, which is a term that totally doesn’t describe me (rule follower to a fault over here). But man I am diggin’ the dark side.

And now we have a completely different style and mood in this space without having to sacrifice our furniture that we love so much (which saved money so win/win).

It’s been an interesting journey trying to peg down what our style really is because Robert and I always like a good balance of masculine and feminine. We like modern, but we don’t want to go too far over the edge since our house’s architecture is so traditional.

This just feels like a happy balance of everything.

All the Master Bedroom Details

Textiles

I combined this indigo mud cloth style pillow with this faux leather pillow and simple cotton print lumbar to help modernize the more traditional/French farmhouse style bed a bit.

This rug was the perfect one to help balance out the black.

For the bedding, we kept our same favorite sheets and duvet and just swapped the old quilt for this textured bedspread set.

Grid Molding Wall

We’re kind of hooked on all kinds of molding in this house, so we busted out the miter saw to create this grid focal wall in a matter of 2 days. LOVE how it turned out!

Furniture

The only change we made to our furniture was to our existing nightstands, which I painted Fusion Mineral Paint in Lamp White, replaces the glass in the doors with cane webbing, and painted the hardware with my favorite aged brass spray paint.

I’ve searched high and low for our furniture set online but apparently it’s discontinued. This bed, this tall dresser, and this double dresser are very similar though (unfortunately not for as cheap as we paid 3 years ago).

TV Camouflage

We hardly ever use our TV in here except when one of us is sick (which has been quite a lot so far this fall/winter). It’s hardly noticeable against the black paint though.

I found this set of 3 cityscape pencil sketches that look like Savannah and Charleston, two cities that have a very big place in our hearts. They were $20 in an antique store, and I just freshened up the scuffed frames with Antique Gold Rub n Buff.

Robert randomly stuck his old Marine Corps cover on this hat stand one day while he was cleaning out some of his memorabilia, and it ended up being the perfect sentimental display.

Closet Doors

We’re not huge fans of bifold doors, but there was really no way around them considering the layout of this room (mainly because of my closet closest to the bed).

This was one detail we had to splurge on with these French bifold doors, which we painted Benjamin Moore Simply White, added antique mirror film to the glass panes, and used these gold and glass knobs. You can get all the details about the closet door project here.

Windows

We loved our guest bedroom‘s green velvet curtains so much that we sprang for the white version in here to add more white/black balance too.

And we finally replaced the old yellowed blinds with these woven Roman shades in Bonaire Flaxen. We opted for blackout and cordless, but for the sleep improvement and toddler-safety factor, it was completely worth that.

The window between the two closets was sort of wasted space, so we placed this bench there as a place to lay out clothes for the next morning and sit to put on shoes.

DIY Art

Besides the pencil sketch cityscapes, the only other piece of art on the walls is this DIY large scale art we made using a public domain image. It was quick to make and cost less than $50!

By leaving the other walls blank, it allows this piece to shine and helps the room feel not so cluttered.

Lighting

I liked our previous ceiling fan in the beginning, but it started to feel a little too shabby rustic after a while. We swapped it for this brass and black fan and have zero regrets.

Since space is so tight on either side of our bed with our skinny nightstands, we chose these wall sconces that swivel for good reading light and leave extra space open on the tabletops.

And I swear this table lamp looks exactly like a $300 one I’ve seen in Pottery Barn except ours was way cheaper. I didn’t love the burlap shade the came with it originally but I swapped it with another lamp we already owned.

That’s it! Done! Finished!

It’s been mostly complete for over a month now actually but getting those little tiny details wrapped up always seems to take me the longest.

I don’t think I’ve slept nearly as well the last several years as I have this past month. Black paint + blackout shades + light filtering curtains = a GOOD night’s sleep. This room feels like a cocoon of coziness at night.

If you want to know about any of the sources, you can find them all here:

• Wall color: Kilz Rebel
• Bed (similar – ours is discontinued)
• Double dresser (similar)
• Tall dresser (similar)
• Rug
• Ceiling Fan
• Roman shades in Bonaire Flaxen
• Curtains
• Bench
• Nightstands (DIY tutorial linked)
• Wall sconces
• Lamp
• Faux leather pillows
• Indigo mud cloth print pillows
• Ivory and blue lumbar pillow
• Quilt set
• DIY winterscape art (tutorial linked)
• Gold bowl
• Fiddle leaf fig stems
• Planter pots
• Eyeglass holder
• Marble picture frame