Kids rooms- with a learning curve

Designing your first kids room is exciting, and a bit intimidating. There is a plethora of adorable themes and prints, colors, and it can really make your head spin. Since you don't know your child's personality yet, it really relies on you! Do you want you baby boy to support your favorite sports team, love boats, or animals.

I guess its kind of like your wedding. I remember trying on slim dresses, big poofy dresses, mermaid style, etc. I had nautical themes, farm themes, ocean colors, fall colors. If I could, I think I could have planned a wedding for each season in a different setting.

As with my wedding, I finally settled on a theme/color scheme. I decided to do a jungle theme for my first baby boy. I love jungle animals and I had a lot of things that would go with it. It is that last statement that I realize is where I fail. Usually, every vision comes with a price tag and in order to save money I always look to how to incorporate what we already have. Which ends up leaving the overall design a little flat.

I came across this picture today.

 This was the room decoration for my first born. At the time, I LOVED it and thought there was some great cohesion with the things in the room, and in all fairness, there was. What isn't shown is the art piece with the African animals walking out of the painting and the wood carvings I got in Kenya. There was some cute stuff. But damn if this room isn't screaming BORING! The monotone of the walls, the lack of enthusiasm in the draperies. It feels sterile. A little paint could have made this a different room all together. 

If we look at my next attempt at his room.

Seriously? Wall decals? Not even arranged with any creativity? I did like the orange closet, only because it was my son's favorite color at the time and he loved it.

But this room is the opposite of the first. The furniture and design items are limited at most. The color is an overstatement, especially with the oak trim, and the double curtains. There is a lack of a bedspread and honestly, not much cohesiveness other than sports theme sprawled all over.


As time went on, and my second son moved into the room, I tried to find a way to make it better. I was on a budget and figured the room would grow.


I will say, when I got the bunk bed in and got matching bed sets, it started to look better, though, I still never liked it. It wasn't thought out, and I didn't have the budget for it, so it seemed rushed and thrown together. I blame pregnancy on this one.

On my third kids room, I think I really started to learn. Here is my daughters room.

In true recycling fashion, I was able to keep the jungle theme and girly it up with a pink jungle bed set. It was the first time I went and found inspiration. I decided to take a risk, I painted the trim off white and did a half wall, mimicking the design from Sherwin Williams collection. I took all the colors from this:

Terrible quality photo, I'm sorry. It's the only one I can find from when it was her room. Once again, as my rooms get better, I wish my photography skills did, so I could really show off how good it looked.

After realizing it wasn't fair to give the single girl the bigger room, this room became the boys, and I got a clean slate to start over. I had to figure out, do I paint again, or do I try to fit their red, navy, and baby blue sports theme in here. First thing first, I knew I had to get rid of the green wall, it just didn't work.

The tan and off white did fit the sports theme. Especially when I was able to do the baseball wall. This was one of my original inspirations of the "sports themed room". But in the other room the boys were in, there really wasn't any wall space where this would work. I think it came out awesome here. The colors are SW China Doll for top, SW Dromedary Camel on bottom, the tan stitching is also Dromedary Camel and the red stitching is left over exterior door paint SW Salute. I used a kids paint brush from a water color paint set and just did it by hand. There were a few that came out a little wonky and I painted over them and redid it. I also traced the original half circles with a pencil before starting. Took me an hour or two and it really pops.

Here's the wall in progress:

To do the half wall, I measured along the wall and marked with a yellow crayon, then I laid painters tape just above my yellow marks and used a roller to roll on the tan. I made sure to hit the bottom of the tape and then pull the tape off still wet. I think I got really clean lines. The next stage we moved the beds in and got matching red end tables. The green floors stayed because I thought they gave the feel of a field.

For Christmas we gave the boys these cool skateboards and they fit in perfect with the colors and the theme of the room. I added a bookshelf and kept it the natural wood color to match the skateboards and here it is. I love it. Although the floors are green and fine, I do look forward to the day they have actual hardwood floors in here.