As a first-time homeowner, my fiance and I spent most of the first few months furnishing rooms and creating a functional space. Now that we are settled in and have our essentials stocked in our pantry, we can play around with color and bohemian style elements! We wanted to start with our dining room since that’s where most people would hang out and gather at our house.

I was initially thinking of painting our wall a dusty pink or blush. I love pink, it makes me happy. But as we flipped through colors on the Home Depot Project Color app, I found this delightful teal shade called “Mermaid Sea.” The richness and darkness of it spoke to me for some reason. AND! It matches the backsplash in our kitchen! Why not be a little matchy-matchy, right?

Here is a before and after photo:

Although we are completely in love with our custom monkeypod dining table (made by local contractor Reality Construction), bench and our vintage rattan chairs, we knew the boring eggshell color didn’t truly bring out the beautiful craftsmanship of our furniture.

Our wall decor consisted of woven and carved artifact collection from around Hawaii, Saipan, Palau and Ghana. I felt they were a perfect compliment to our dining set! We had planned to have an intentionally mismatched gallery wall, but after looking at all the woven art we had, we decided to feature them on our wall.

Right when we finished our accent wall, artwork came in from Argentinian artist Ana Clerici. I had been looking at this one piece for a very long time! It makes me think of home, where fresh fish is the best thing on earth and the colorful dress makes me smile. While it was intended for the dining room, I decided to save this beauty for our living room, since there’s not much color in it at the moment.

You’ll notice other boho elements in our home like rattan and woven baskets. The baskets are a lifesaver when it comes to organizing and storing items that may not fit the vibe of the room but are needed (like snacks, cleaning items, tripods and even XBox controllers). We use them for everything from grocery shopping to beach trips and storage.

And that’s our boho style dining room! It’s now complete! We are always delighted when our family members ask to take photos in front of our wall. I think we accomplished our goal of finding that perfect boho and fun color for the most used room in our home.