They Anchored 2 IKEA KALLAX Units to the Wall and Made This Tiny Bedroom Work for 2 Sisters
If you’re designing a small room for two of your kids to share, look no further than Emily Tarleton and her husband Scott Davis’s home for inspiration. The pair, who live in a 550-square-foot Manhattan apartment with their two daughters, 6-year-old Ginny and 2-year-old Ruby, took a converted second bedroom and created magic.
Because the apartment began as a one-bedroom, Ginny and Ruby’s room has no closet (though it does have one of the apartment’s only windows!). When the family moved in a few years back, “It was essentially a white box with an old air conditioner, wood floors, and radiator,” Emily told Cubby’s sister site Apartment Therapy in her House Tour.
Designing the room to make it not only functional, but representative of Ginny and Ruby, became a top priority for the couple. Emily sourced Sandberg’s Maskrosen wallpaper in pink (her girls’ favorite color), applying it to the walls with renter-friendly liquid starch instead of traditional wallpaper paste. And she found a canopy from a brand based in the United Kingdom that matches the wallpaper exactly. (Unfortunately, the exact colorway is sold out, but here’s another option.)
“I loved the look of whimsical, colorful children’s rooms in the UK,” Emily says. “Almost storybook-like, but more refined. I wanted to embrace color, patterns, and lightness, and create a fun space to inspire childhood imagination and play.”
One of the biggest challenges Emily faced when designing the room was the unmovable eyesore of an air conditioning unit that sits in the middle of a wall. She decided to “embrace the chaos of living with these quirky New York City moments” and use the rest of that wall for vertical storage, installing pegs, hanging shelves for the girls’ mini library, and putting some of the girls’ bigger toys (like a play kitchen) up against the wall as well.
Although Emily describes the room as “a very narrow tight space,” she acknowledges that they have the luxury of tall ceilings. She and Scott placed two IKEA KALLAX systems on top of one another and anchored them to the wall, using the cubes for storage. “That has worked really great for toy rotation and has worked like a charm for keeping us organized and keeping the room neat,” Emily said in her House Tour.
Ginny and Ruby have fully embraced their shared space, which Emily describes as “whimsical girlhood fun.” She says that the girls love to play in the room and on the top bunk together. It’s one of the few rooms that has a window, so it’s often drenched in natural light.
“The view of the backyard is magical!” Emily says. “Plus the vertical storage has been a game changer.”
To see more of Emily, Scott, Ginny, and Ruby’s home, including how they make the small space work for a family of four, visit the full House Tour on Apartment Therapy.