Plain white walls

A common complaint amongst foreigners living in Japan is the boring white walls throughout ALL rental properties.  My last place had a few heavy duty hooks that could be moved along a track in one of the walls, allowing me to actually hang things from the wall.  Because heaven forbid you put holes in the wall - you will die a horrible death when your landlord finds them, or at least have large portions of your safety deposit withheld.

But plain white walls are boring when you've grown up with wallpaper (not that I want the pink flowers I chose as an 8 year old!) or coloured walls (nor do I want the oppressive dark navy walls and ceiling chosen for the basement bedroom by the teenage son of the previous owner of my dad's last house) or artwork and photographs hanging on the walls (although I must admit given the past year I'm not too keen on having glass hanging anywhere...).

But anyways...

White boring walls.

I don't remember where I first heard about wall stickers - I think it was another Japan blog but I can't remember... I do remember that I did a quick google search and found this design and knew it would would go perfectly in our living/dining area.  (It isn't particularly colourful, being in shades of browns and greys, but it is comforting and relaxing)  But I didn't order it right away.  U wasn't too sure about the whole idea of wall stickers and so I dragged my feet until one day I ordered it half because I simply wanted to close the browser tab with the store's website (that I had had open on my browser the entire time).

The package arrived in the mail and spent nearly a week unopened before I suddenly decided one afternoon, while I was chatting to a friend on Skype, that I wanted to put them up.  And I did.  Never one to stick to the 'way things are done' I didn't want to make the perfectly round tree shown on the website.  I freestyled it, and ended up with a design that I love and has gotten lots of compliments - most importantly from U!

Not long after I started getting really fed up with the boring white walls in our bedroom so I turned to google again.  We bought some brightly coloured fabric in Indonesia that I am hoping to some day turn into a bedspread/quilt for our bed, so I was looking for a very specific set of colours and design.  Surprisingly it didn't take me long to find exactly what I wanted - with a HUGE range of colours to chose from.  This time U was just as excited as I was and helped me put them up too!

our Indonesian fabric and the plain colours I've bought to make the bedspread...

Our new, colourful and fun bedroom! (the stickers are in orange, blue, and green, and match the fabric perfectly!)

No more plain boring walls for us!