As I eluded to yesterday, I’m in the midst of a lot of different types of projects this month, and I’m feeling a little bit all over the place as I try and get our totally exposed and disorganized house back into a presentable state. One of the more creative and exciting projects that’s going down is the transformation of our old guest room into Julia’s new bedroom.
It’s actually the biggest of all the bedrooms in the home (I picked mine to be the master when I moved in because it picks up a lot of natural sunlight and has direct line of sight to the beach, but it is slightly smaller, even with a smaller closet). Julia’s new room has a lot of potential for being a totally cozy, functional space for a little girl to grow in, and since I never decorated it into much of a guest room to begin with (I refinished the floors, painted it, and installed a new fan) it’s kind of still a blank slate.
Starting with paint colors, we’re giving Julia a lot of creative freedom to pick how she wants the room to look and feel. Color was always the biggest component of making a room feel like “mine” when I was younger, so I pulled together a whole slew of paint chips that were fun, bright, and diverse, yet still fitting in with the rest of the paint colors in the home. The rainbow of options, like the rest of our home, are a little more muted than a palette of a Crayola 24-pack of crayons, but gave her what was still a wide range and selection allowed her to enough freedom to still make an independent decision.
I was pulling for a pumpkin or avocado green, but purple is a fave, so it didn’t take her long to settle upon a Sherwin-Williams shade named African Violet (second from the left in the above picture). I self-matched back to a Behr shade called Grape Creme while I was at Home Depot recently, and while it definitely purple, it had a slightly gray undertone which may or may not have effected the voting in the end. I also picked out a lighter purple color chip called Crushed Peony from the Behr Ultra swatch line, and brought home 7.5 oz. test cans of each for just $6.
We tested the paint colors in a few places on the wall; along the trim, which would help to show its impact alongside the already crisp white edging of the room, on a wall above the bed, which gets only indirect sunlight, and on a wall directly beside the window, in a spot that’s blasted with the afternoon sun every day. It was interesting to see how different the colors looked in each location, and how they varied from dawn to dusk.
With as much decisiveness as when she made her first paint color decision, she settled on the lighter pinky-purple, Crushed Peony, so that’s the direction we’re heading in.
Now that we’re all mutually on team Peony, it’s easier to look into other purchases, main ones being: an 8×10 area rug, curtains, bedding, and a new duvet.
In addition to swooning over colorful paint samples, I’ve been making lists and tearing pictures of irresistibly girly bedrooms from magazines for months now in preparation, so we have some good ideas up our short summertime sleeves. The room’s not going to go from blah-to-BHG-worthy in a matter of days, but taking the time to figure out how the room should be arranged and decorated will help all of the layers of the design onion fall into place over time.
One of my long-time favorites is this arrangement from the 2010 IKEA catalogue. I found the image on digsdigs.com, but the tearsheet has been on my wall in the office for two years. The bright light and windows behind the bed? The cascading wall of potted plants? I love it all, and I’d love that kind of brightness in one of the rooms of our home someday if not immediately.
Design Sponge offers some great ideas too. The pinks in this next room remind me of the pinks that I had in my bedroom when I was a little kid, and I love the tapestry as an accent. It might not be perfectly friendly for little kids, but Julia’s past the age where she’d be furiously tugging and pulling at loose art like that. We have some fun trips lined up this month, and Amy Azzarito’s post on infusing your home with mementos that you can’t find at a local retail shop struck a chord.
Additionally, how about them walls in this next room? Joy Thigpen’s room was featured atop of Design Sponge’s Best Kids Rooms for good reason: So bright. So happy. And the hand painted aestetic is just so chill, it’s like sitting on a hill at sunset. I want to be there.
Flowing accents like banners and garland can add charm to any room, which is why I still have a few strands of this DIY paper garland hung in the guest room. Whether it’ll stay as-is or replaced with something new, I’m not sure yet, but these fabric panels from parents.com really vibe with the Grassroots girl in me.
And finally, one of my favorites is a pretty pink Poppytalk feature, was something I documented on Pinterest a few months ago. I like the idea of a horizontal line break (it must be an addicting trait since my living room is all color blocked as well) but I’m not sure how well it’d work with such a light pink shade.
I’ll be working on the room for the rest of the week, but I’ll be back with an update soon. In the meantime, I think you’ll want to check out the chalkboard that we crafted for DIY Network. Pink infusion time!
What are some of your favorite resources for kid’s bedroom design?
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