Taking Up Space
My empty Nest Room Makeover
My daughter left for college in 2021. Her bedroom at first waited for her during breaks and summers, and then less and less frequently. Eventually, I told her I was thinking about turning it into my office. Time for an empty nest room makeover.
I realize I didn’t need her permission, exactly. But I wanted her to know she always has a safe place to land. We talked about where I would store her things, and where she would sleep when she comes home.
And then, finally, I had a room that was actually, genuinely mine to fill.
And I froze.
Not because the room was complicated. Because the question was.
What do you want?
I had spent so long making choices in relation to other people — as a wife, as a mother, as the person who knew everyone’s preferences and schedules and needs — that I wasn’t sure I knew how to make a choice that belonged only to me.
I had learned how to consider, accommodate, anticipate, adjust.
I had not practiced asking, What do I want?, without immediately editing the answer.
I moved everything out of the room and it sat empty. For months.
I finally decided to pick out a paint color. It was a reversible decision. I could handle that. The options were endless, and I spent considerable time with samples, taping them to the walls, wanting to get it just right.
I finally settled on Sherwin Williams Accessible Beige, warm and quiet. I painted the room myself.
I named it The Sanctuary.
That was the first small act of taking up space. Not in a loud way. Not in a dramatic way. Just by choosing a color and beginning.
Then I started looking at carpet and promptly became overwhelmed all over again. I was so afraid of making the wrong choice that I made no choice.
A friend took me shopping and explained her process. She looks, she decides, and she buys without permission from anyone. She creates a space she enjoys and does not worry too much about what others see. She makes mistakes, but she fixes them.
She taught me to slow down. Look at things with your hands. Order samples. Sit in the chair. Don’t decide from a screen. Wait for a sale. And don’t buy it if you don’t love it.
She was decisive, but patient.
I went on my computer and planned the whole room from an online catalogue — full layout, a desk, bookcases, a reading chair, every piece. I went into the store and picked up wood and fabric samples to confirm. I took the samples home and realized it just didn’t feel right.
So I started over.
This time I used AI to generate images, trying everything that grabbed my attention. It built confidence, but I still didn’t quite know what I wanted the room to look like.
I went looking for art to drop into the photos I was creating. That’s when I found the painting. Moongate 5 by Neicy Frey. Dark teal, deep green, tree branches. I dropped it into an AI render of my room, and I finally knew what I wanted.
The painting energized me and soothed me at the same time. Exactly what my room should be.
There’s a painting in my living room that belonged to my mother. A large, original oil, bought from a décor shop where she worked in 1969.
My mother was not quite 30. She had three kids and was in the middle of a divorce. She had just gotten her first credit account and bought her first car — and somewhere in that year of becoming her own person, she bought a painting.
I was only four, but I remember how much it meant to her. She took pictures of us standing in front of it. It was big and bold and unmistakably hers.
I didn’t have words for it then, but I do now.
That painting was her laying claim to her own space, what she wanted in her life.
I see now how art helps us understand ourselves. Sometimes we recognize what we want before we can explain it. Sometimes a room, a color, a chair, a painting becomes a way of saying: this is mine. This matters to me. I am allowed to be here.
So now the carpet is installed. The bookcases are up. I’m typing this at my new desk.
The room isn’t finished. There are still decisions to make, window treatments to sew, a side table to choose.
Every single decision in it reflects who I am, or who I want to become.
I think this is part of what it means to reset.
Notice where we made choices that were right at one time — choices that accommodated, protected, supported, and made room for the people we loved — and ask whether those choices still make sense now.
Maybe taking up space at this stage of life begins there.
With one room. One wall. One corner. One hour.
One place where we stop editing the answer to the question: What do I want?
A few links in this post — for pieces I bought and use in this room — are Amazon affiliate links. If you click through and purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only link to things I actually own and chose for myself.
The Sanctuary
Reset the Nest · Full Room Harmony
The room has arrived. Four zones, one voice.
Every wall is now accounted for and they all speak the same language: dark walnut wood against Sherwin Williams Accessible Beige flat paint, cream as the continuous ground, botanical green as the living accent.
The acoustic panels and the trim are the same tonal family. The black walnut bookcases continue it; the Harper desk’s dark finish picks it up too. The chair legs echo it. There is no rogue element — even the mint guitar lands correctly as a single unexpected note that ties directly back to the suggested paintings.
