AFTER office makeover pics

Love me some drop ceilings, y'all

One of my recent projects was the office of a club owner. The existing space came with a drop ceiling featuring amazing overheard flourescent lighting, which is ALWAYS so desirable. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit 'what the FU&K am I gonna do with this shiot?!':

Ripping it out completely wasn't an option. So, how do you make something so atrocious become so awesome? You seek inspiration from master designers who have gone before and TURNED IT OUT. That's how. Enter David Hicks, stage right. David Hicks was an English interior decorator and designer who is legendary for his bold use of color & pattern as well as mixing vintage & modern furnishings. He was a genius and is one of my favorite designers. His son Ashley Hicks and daughter, India Hicks, clearly inherited his genes of design genius, both having their own prolific careers in the interior industry as well. That whole family was style-slapped by the universe! In fact, they're actually royalty in the UK?! I mean...

So, David Hicks & his iconic use of color was a major inspiration for my dropped ceiling dilemma:

COLOR BLOCKING!

Instead of trying to hide all that drop, I decided to feature it. Damn! And here's what I ended up with:

As y'all can see, the walls and ceilings got color blocked with two tones of this 'liscious raspberry color, taken right out of our new rugs:

I decided to highlight the graphic grid in the drop ceiling caused by the supports, by painting it out a contrast color. Then repeated that on the walls. Yummy!

And you can't really see it well here, but look very closely on the far left side of image and you can just make out the pink line on the wall:

How HAWT is this office, y'all? Thanks to the fab Kelly Marshall for the incredible pics (& Carnivale and crew at the club who made this paint treatment happen)! And this post was supposed to be about how to color block, but then I just got cra and had to share all the AFTER shots to help illustrate what a bold, interesting paint technique can do to a room, even WITH some janky drop ceiling! But, check back soon for the actual how-to on this paint treatment. Happy Friday!