One Room Challenge: Week 3 - Home Office

It's Electric...

It's week 3 of the ORC and we are getting lit - aka adding electrical boxes to the built ins. These will allow me to instal wall sconces above each bookcase section. Some behind the scenes work was done like caulking, wood filling nail holes, and sanding. Here is where we left off:

Planning + Prepping

Before we started making holes in the built ins for electrical boxes I had to figure out which lights I wanted in the office. There was a few stipulations here:

1. Height of the lights.. these lights would be in the very top box of the built in so it can't be near the ceiling but it also can't be hanging too far into the lower box.

2. Mid Century style

3. Gold

4. Cost

Here are some of the options I looked at:

Light It Up

Because of the straight lines all over the built ins I wanted to soften it up with some sort of circular light shape so the light I decided on is below. It meets all my criteria and didn't break the bank!

Now, which direction to flip the light?

I decided to have the light aim down to illuminate the bookcases but also aimed up just looked funny. Before you make this decision check and make sure the glass screws onto the fixture. Mine did - if it just sat on top I would not be able to flip it the other direction.

My dad installed the electrical boxes and I picked out the lights but before they can be installed some painting needs to be done...

Next Steps

That leads to probably the biggest decision about the built ins... what color!? I was very close to going the usual route and painting them black but I want something a little different for this room. Here are the 4 options I tested:

The top two are just too light for me. It gives me a coastal vibe that I'm not feeling. They looked much more gray green on the swatch than they appear on the cabinet.

The bottom left is a little too brown for me but I'm digging the bottom right - sort of a jewel tone.

Before I can go at it with some paint, primer is 100% necessary here. I want to cover up the wood grain as much as possible.

Join me back here next week for the ORC Week 4 update!

(Visit the rest of the ORC's designers for this event: www.oneroomchallenge.com/orc-blog)

Wish me luck + follow along at

@homesweetstarnes