We can delay no longer. Our little man NEEDS a big boy room because we need more sleep. He is a little displaced since we’ve been transitioning the nursery into our new baby girl’s room. Plus, he currently prefers a bed over a crib. The short story: He’s spending way too much time in our bed.
If you’ve been around for a bit, you know I get a little excited about kid’s rooms, so it’s no surprise I’m really excited about this room, but what you might not realize is my natural style leans a wee bit masculine, meaning I’m really, really excited about this room.
First things first. Let’s look at how the room looks now.
The Images That Inspired The Design
Previously we were using this extra bedroom as a playroom, since we already have a guest bedroom downstairs and our oldest was a tiny bit scared to be in the basement, where our playroom space is. Now that’s she’s older she has no qualms about it and our son loves being down there so most of the toys we were storing in here will be moving downstairs or will be donated. You can see the playroom in it’s former glory and find a tutorial for the rainbow book wall here.
Originally we were just going to keep his room bare bones and wait until he was a little bit older to go all out, but then I started scrolling Pinterest and found images like below and I couldn’t stop myself from dreaming up plans.
What I love about these rooms is that they are sophisticated but you can still tell they are kid’s rooms. That’s my goal here. I’m planning refined and easy to age up finishes, paired with whimsical details. While I’m taking cues and inspiration from the feel of these rooms, we’ll be doing thing a little bit differently.
The feel of the following image really inspired me. We are planning to add some type of permanent built in, which will probably be another bench, but I couldn’t help but be drawn to this image. Ultimately, I can’t picture a tween or teen boy loving this bookcase and this room isn’t about me, it’s about Kristian and future Kristian, so we will be skipping the adorable scalloped details. The detail I am holding on too, however, is the color pop. I’m hoping to incorporate a bit of this through our furnishings. I shared some of the furnishes we’ll be using here. I’ll share a more comprehensive plan in the future.
While all of these rooms speak to me, there not exactly what I’m envisioning in my head, so I turned my Pinterest search to rooms outside the “boy room” filter.
I kept coming back to vertical shiplap painted rich colors with traditional crown like below.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but every single picture I’ve shown you incorporates blue. I’m drawn to blue. It’s all over my home. It’s my comfort zone. I want to have a little more fun here, so we are planning green. After all, it’s just paint. In the future if Kristian is as passionate about a color as Eva is about purple we may end up painting it anyways. Perhaps we’ll go with a green similar to this room by Rehabitat Interiors which is Farrow & Ball Smoke Green.
Another thing you might not know about me. I can’t leave a ceiling alone. I love to paint them, wallpaper them, panel them… really anything but paint them white. I think of them as the fifth wall. Daren’s been wanting to incorporate natural wood into our home for a while, so I figured why not give it a try here. I’m the most nervous about this element because I don’t want the room to get to dark. We are hoping to source a really light wood, probably a white oak, with quiet details and very little yellow undertones. We are thinking about extending our hardwoods into this room. More on that later. The above picture gives me confidence a light wood ceiling can work with dark floors, though I’m picturing boards with a little less character.
Storage is always a high priority for us, if not the top priority. We will absolutely be incorporating some kind of built-in. The IKEA hack bench in Eva’s room is the most practical project we’ve done. Originally I was leaning towards some kind of bookcase solution like above, but Daren wasn’t super into it. He suggested another window seat but I really have my heart set on doing statement curtains and that would interfere with that plan.. During my Pinterest research I kept coming back to the image below. I think we can make something like this work on the wall that the rainbow book wall currently resides. We are undecided if it will be open or incorporate drawers, a la’ Eva’s room.
Our Boys Room Design Plan
So where exactly did we land? You can see our preliminary plans below. As any DIYer knows, these plans will likely change along the way, but this I where we are at right now. I’m calling this Ralph Lauren meets Scandinavian.
Want to see how the room turned out? Click here.
Ask me any questions you have in the comments or find me on Instagram!
