One Room Challenge | Week 1 | Intro to First Ever Virtual ORC Challenge

Happy “1st day of ORC” day!! Is that a thing? I don’t know, but because 2020 is so wild, I’ve been enjoying making every day into a “day”, if you know what I mean?

The One Room Challenge is a six-week series started and hosted by Linda of Calling it Home, where we transform a room from start to finish and reveal it at the end. Linda invites 20 participants as featured designers to post updates on Wednesdays, but anyone, anywhere, can join in as a guest participant and post their updates on Thursdays.

I’m so excited to be a featured designer of the One Room Challenge for the first time ever! But, this season of the One Room Challenge, things are a bit different. The 20 featured designers are VIRTUALLY transforming their dream home/room and showing you each of our design process for six weeks. At the end of the six weeks, we’ll reveal our virtual rooms in the form of 3D renderings that’ll be realistic enough to feel like you’re looking at a real space!

This season of the One Room Challenge, we’re partnering with High Point Market, which is essentially the candy store for designers. It’s 12 WHOLE million sqft of showroom space (in North Carolina) for designers to oooh and ahhh and get ideas for their clients’ homes. It’s really the place where design ideas come to life and where we can access unique designer-only furnishings for our clients that you generally wouldn’t be able to buy in your local retail stores.

If you’re new here, I want to share a little bit about me. My name is Whitney and I’m a New Orleans based interior designer. I’m almost reaching my 1 year mark of having a separate-from-my-home design studio/brick-and-mortar and recently opened it to the public for light retail. Definitely check out behind the scenes of my everyday design biz on IG and visit my online shop! I am obsessed with adding large doses of saturated color in a sophisticated way and my main design goal (on every project) is to create a functional, beautiful home that’s reflective of my client with a little hint of ME. I absolutely love what I do.

Last year, I transformed my dining room for the Fall 2019 season of the ORC and it was such a fun makeover. Check out the before and after of that space below and the full reveal here. I also transformed my ugly kitchen years ago as a guest participant of the ORC.

Now, for the plan for this One Room Challenge.

Right now, I’m actually working on a real life project, designing the interior of a client’s 6000 sq ft home (which is also my dream home, haha), so I’ll be using that home as inspiration for this challenge. In real life, I’m only working on the renovation of the home and as of now, there will be no furniture or styling, since this home will probably be sold. So, I’ll take a few spaces from this home and happily come up with a virtual design that’s everything I dream this home could be! How exciting is that???

I’m gonna be virtually designing the living room, the home bar, and the sunroom (which I’m virtually turning into a library).

This home was built in the 40s, so I thought it would be fun to show you what these spaces looked like a loooong time ago, especially the kitchen! If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll actually get to see me design the kitchen of this home in real life. I’m so excited! The kitchen used to be on the second floor, but now it’s in the place where this sitting room used to be, on the first floor. Well, it WILL be in this sitting room area; I still have to design the layout of the new kitchen. In my IG stories, I share what this home currently looks like all the time!

Here are some other images to show you how this home was showing off to guests back in the day. The mirrored room is/was the living room, the same room that I am virtually designing for the ORC. The mirrors are all gone now. In real life. LOL. And, the sunroom actually looks the same now, but virtually I’ll be turning it into a library, since one of my biggest home goals is to have a beautiful library with floor to ceiling bookshelves. In real life, I’m just updating the sunroom with paint and new doors/windows, having the floor leveled, and adding a door to lead to the new mudroom I’m designing.

I’ll take you along my design process as I transform these spaces, like it’s a real project with real clients (I’m the “client”, though).

Next week, I’ll share details of the beginning part of my design process… the client questionnaire and the design consultation. You’ll get more details about the spaces and the “client”, as well as see how I develop my initial design ideas based off these details. If you have any thoughts, please let me a comment below!

Can’t wait to share more! Be sure to follow me on Instagram, to catch the behind the scenes action AND you’ll get to see me actually go through the real renovation process of this gorgeous home. Trust me, you’ll love it!!!

And, if you’re in the market for home decor and fun accesories, be sure to take a peek at my shop!

Be sure to visit the other 19 featured designers below. You’re in for a treat!

Albie Knows | Ana Claudia Design | At Home With Joseph | Barbour Spangle Design | Dwell by Cheryl

Eneia White Interiors | Gray Space Interiors | Haneen’s Haven | Hommeboys | Interiors by Design

Jana Donohoe Designs | Laura Hodges Studio | Lauren Nicole Designs | Nicole White Designs | Nikole Starr Interiors 

 Nile Johnson Interior Design | Prudence Home + Design | Thou Swell | Traders Haven Design | Whitney J Decor | HPMKT

Till next time!