It’s Week Two of the One Room Challenge, hosted by Calling It Home and media partner House Beautiful, and I have so much to share with you! Last week I shared our inspiration board with you, and this week I’m going to break it down and add to it to complete the furniture story for this inspiring space.

First, though, let me give you the lay of the land. Docere is a natural wellness centre focusing on a multidisciplinary approach to wellness, so the space has been broken up into a bright reception area, a large IV Therapy suite with nurse’s station, and four treatment rooms where Dr. Merrick will work alongside her growing team of practitioners for a very integrated approach to healing and wellness.

My main focus for the One Room Challenge will be just the reception area and IV Therapy suite. It is, after all, called the ONE Room Challenge. I’ve been known to push those boundaries before (remember my Spring 2016 ORC?), but I’m grateful I stopped myself at two spaces for this one as it is indeed an adequate challenge to keep us more than busy in the weeks ahead!

I came into the project rather at the 11th hour as Dr. Amber had done a brilliant job of keeping her new venture under wraps, working with an architect behind the scenes on the space planning and cabinetry. What that meant was hitting the ground running when it came to all of our selections – a bit of a designer workout if you’ll pardon the pun! The good news is I’m thrilled with how things are coming together, starting with our foundational furnishings. Today I’ll share more details on our plans for the furnishings in the reception area.

When it came to making Docere feel like a spa, I knew that elevated and elegant furniture selections would be essential to our success. I wanted each touch point within the natural wellness centre to feel considered and inspiring, so naturally I started by exploring the Bernhardt collection for the two anchor pieces in these spaces.

In the reception area, we needed a coffee table that was beautifully made and truly breathtaking. Needless to say, we didn’t have to work very hard to find one in Bernhardt’s stunning collection.

The Levine Cocktail Table is a stunning example of simple elegance and exquisite craftsmanship. It is made from a delicate mosaic of gypsom veneers, a mineral-based material with roots in ancient construction techniques. Gypsum was used on the interiors of the Egyptian Pyramids, which are still standing 5,000 years later, a testimony to its durability. Today the mineral is mined or quarried and afterwards can be developed into a wide range of products. The Levine coffee table is made from what is called Alabaster Gypsum, which radiates an ivory brilliance, glowing from beneath its almost opalescent, high-gloss protective topcoat. Here are a couple of photos I snapped right after it arrived:

Dr. Amber literally squealed with delight when she saw it, and we both just wanted to stroke it lovingly with the affection it so clearly deserves. The way the light plays off of the finish of this piece is so ridiculously beautiful that it is undeniably the jewelry of the room. We can officially check “inspirational anchor piece” off of our list with this beauty in place!

To compliment the radiant glow of the Levine Cocktail Table, I selected one of my favourite modern classic chairs from Rove Concepts, the Ghost Side Chair. Lucite chairs offer an effortless elegance to almost any space, and the traditional shape of these armless chairs juxtaposed against the modern material use of lucite creates just the right kind of welcome for Docere.

Inspired. Delighted. Intrigued. Confident. These are just some of the words to describe how we want people to feel when they walk in the door of Docere, and Rove’s Ghost Side Chairs will help us tell that story.

One of the elements that was very important to me was to make sure we went beyond the standards of a typical naturopathic clinic in striving for more of a spa-like environment. I’ve been to many a medical clinic and practitioners office over the years, and the main adjective I would use for most of them is clinical. Some are even depressing.

Not Docere. I wanted Docere to feel like a retreat from the everyday; a place you looked forward to visiting because it inspired you when you walked through the doors, and a place you were glad you visited because you left feeling more hopeful than when you came in.

To me, that meant going beyond expectations, including selecting a central light fixture to elevate the aesthetic of the reception area the moment you walked in the door. Enter the Possini Euro Elnora Chandelier from LampsPlus.

The elegant, random length strands of crystals surrounding this eco-friendly LED drum chandelier offer an organic elegance that is just perfect for Docere. I also love the nod to mineral elements in the crystals in the chandelier and the gypsum in the cocktail table, as they reference the elements of the earth that we draw from when balancing the body with natural supplements. It’s subtle, but I’m all about imbuing meaning into beauty, telling an authentic story with interior design to make each space a true reflection of its purpose and the people it represents. I’m thrilled both of these pieces can serve us in telling that story well.

Next week, I’ll share more about the furnishings and design plan for the IV Therapy suite. For now, back to the mad dash to the finish line as we work to pull together a thousand details into one beautiful, meaningful, inspiring whole.

Wishing Godspeed to all my fellow design daredevils on this One Room Challenge adventure. Be sure to check in on their progress here and here, and I look forward to catching up with you again next week!

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