Before and After: Easy Paint Projects Give This Kid’s Blank Bedroom a Colorful, Cheery Makeover
Colorful bedrooms aren’t reserved for the under-18 crowd, but kids’ spaces do often have color inspiration galore. (Here are 20 of our favorites.) Decorating a child’s bedroom offers up a chance to take bold risks and show off their unique style, personality, and interests in a way that adults sometimes have trouble doing in their own spaces.
Tripurashree Vittal (@craft_myworld) has let the colors of the rainbow guide many past DIY projects, and her daughter’s bedroom is no different. While it was serviceable, the blank-slate look lacked any hint of color or charm.
The walls were all white, which was a “a good foundation to start with,” Tripurashree says. A pink-and-white color scheme fit the bill for her daughter in her younger years, but as she got older, she wanted more color. “My daughter, who is almost nine years old, is getting out of the small kids’ decor and evolving into a sort of tween aesthetic,” Tripurashree says. “This became the great opportunity to design her room into a more colorful, fun, fresh, yet calm space for her to grow up with.”
Tripurashree did several paint projects to help liven things up and move the bedroom into the tween zone. For starters, she painted the wall behind the headboard a minty aqua (Clare’s “Headspace”), her daughter’s favorite color.
“Figuring out the right shade of blue definitely took more time than painting,” Tripurashree says. “It looks green or blue depending on the light and the time of the day! I like both the colors; it works perfectly.”
She also refreshed a basic IKEA HEMNES in a teal shade (Annie Sloan’s “Florence”), which presented a bit of a challenge, since it was painted red before and required more work to repaint. As one final painting project, Tripurashree then covered the trim around the closet in a rich mustard hue (Annie Sloan’s “Tilton”).
“Don’t be scared to use paint on anything,” Tripurashree says. “It’s one of the easiest and budget-friendly things you could do to add so much to the space, yet it is very easy to change if you don’t like it.” Tripurashree says she decided to use chalk paint on the pieces because it didn’t require as much prep as a latex paint, which helped save some time.
“It took only two weeks to get things together once I planned the layout, decor, and DIY projects,” Tripurashree says of her One Room Challenge redo. “Planning, sourcing furniture, and also working with the ever-changing ideas of my daughter took longer than the execution of the project.”
Tripurashree’s decor picks also add tons of color. There are brightly-hued books hung on picture ledges, a rainbow-like rug from Crate&Kids, a multicolored mirror from Home Depot, and a striped pillow and hex-shaped shelves with colorful insides from Target. (Tirpurashree’s shelves already came with color, but this is another great paint project you could add to existing pine shelves.)
One of the biggest challenges in transforming the bedroom, Tripurashree recalls, was rearranging the furniture to be able to fit a queen-sized bed, a dresser, a desk, and book storage. “The only thing I will do differently is look at the big products in-person rather than ordering online, since I had to return two big mirrors, which took lot of time and effort from my end,” she says.
But she’s pleased she was able to piece it all together in a way that still gives plenty of space to move around, while also incorporating her daughter’s design ideas. “I wanted to involve my daughter in the whole process,” Tripurashree writes on her blog. “She is the one who is going to live in that room, I wanted to get her personality into the space.”
Now, her daughter has a color-filled, functional hideaway to call her own. “I’m super proud of the way the room turned out according to the way it was envisioned,” Tripurashree says.
This post was originally published on Apartment Therapy. Read it there: Before and After: Easy Paint Projects Give One Kid’s Blank Bedroom a Colorful, Cheery Redo