Quite awhile back, I asked for some suggestions on brightening up my home. I’m happy to report that we’ve made some progress — behold our new, awash-in-light dining room!

For comparison, here’s a before:

I knew the impact of going from dark gray (it seemed like a good idea at the time…) to a light creamy peach would be big, but I wasn’t prepared for just how fantastic it would feel to hang out in our dining room once we pared it down. The first morning after we finished the paint job, I thought we’d forgotten to turn off lights the night before — it’s that much brighter! Read more about the small changes we made that made a big difference, after the jump. I can’t wait to get started on the living room. –Mary T.

- First we painted (duh). I used my ColorHelper to find the shade because we need it to coordinate with two of our living room walls that we’re not planning to repaint. I used the ColorHelper to find complementary colors in the “warm” spectrum and we ended up with Olympic Paint in Mimosa (A21-2). Which we love.
- We purged. The floor plants are gone. The vintage stepstool is gone. We took out the area rugs, that were colorful but broke up the space, and repurposed an existing IKEA Hessum runner at the entrance to the room in case of wet shoes. It blends better with the light wood, making the floor seem bigger.
- Because the rugs went away, we added stick-on felt furniture pads to the table base to prevent scratches.
- We finally replaced the yucky faux-patina chandelier with an inexpensive Fado fixture, also from IKEA. It’s simple, it looks vaguely ’70s, and we like it juuuust fine. Maybe we’ll splurge on a designer light when we have money again.
- We removed the blinds from above the table and added some film to screen out an ugly view of the perpetually-under-construction house next door. Nothing fancy or designer here — just some inexpensive window film from Gila. And it looks fantastic! We plan to add matching window treatments (the view from the other window is fine) eventually.
- And finally, at a reader’s suggestion on the previous post, we took down the patio umbrella that was partially blocking the dining room window. I guess it took us this long to realize, this is Seattle! We don’t need it!

Cost of new elements for the room?
Fado light: $29.99
Gallon of paint and two brushes: $38
Window film: $17.97
Total: $85.96