Cool kid's room design for klutzes?
October 23, 2010 11:08 AM   Subscribe

I need to repaint my two-year-old son's room. Color and design ideas, please, for a room that will be cool, fun, easy to do, and *cheap*?

We are in a home improvement frenzy around here. Because we are on the broke side, this mostly involves moving things around and painting. I want to paint my two-year-old son's room but I am not so good with the design ideas. Help, hivemind?

(Caveat: My husband and I can paint a room, but anything fancier than that might be beyond us; we have some unfortunate painting experiments in our shared past.)

This is what the room looks like right now. That color is actually a very light lilac. We're planning on taking the closet doors off and we would like to paint the wood trim some funky color. We're not afraid of color (this is the color of our dining room and kitchen right now, though these are getting repainted too), but the room is relatively small. We originally had done it the same shade of orange as the dining room but it made my eyes bleed.

My kid won't be sleeping in this room yet but it will have a twin bed in it. Right now there's a long, two-shelf red bookcase my husband made that will probably stay red. The quilt will probably stay up on the wall, and the room will be decorated mostly with dinosaur art and jungle animal wall stickers. He is OBSESSED with dinosaurs right now.

I'm thinking yellow but I kind of have this idea that yellow always looks dingy. Color combination ideas? Cool paint ideas that even I could do? (Links to pictures and ideas would be awesome...I feel totally overwhelmed by decorating websites.)

Thanks in advance. I'm kind of crappy at the visual side of life.
posted by devotion+doubt to Home & Garden (12 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
A yellow that's closer to orange than green -- say, goldenrod -- won't look dingy, particularly if you paint the trim a warm sort of cream. Sounds cheerful and pleasant to me!
posted by Narrative Priorities at 11:10 AM on October 23, 2010


Yellow is awesome for small rooms. I re-did my very tiny bathroom in yellow tile/yellow accents and cream walls, and it looks so good I'm thinking about doing the same in the kitchen.
posted by vorfeed at 11:26 AM on October 23, 2010


A wonderful and cheap thing to do with a child's room would be to wallpaper it with a timeline of 20th-century history. Nothing too detailed, just -- 1910's, WWI; 1920's, flappers; 1930's, Depression; 1940's, WWII...

Being surrounded by this stuff would give the kid a huge leg up when it came time to actually learn about history -- would make it instinctive and accessible rather than arcane and arbitrary. Wish this had been done for me, and fully intend to do it for any offspring.
posted by foursentences at 11:39 AM on October 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


I vote for relaxing colors in a little boy's room. If it were me I'd pain the top half sky blue and the bottom half grass green. Then I'd get a set of dinosaur wall stickers and let him decide where they go. The good thing about that color combination is that it would be fun without being loud, and it would be easy to change it up later. Next time could be animals, construction equipment, or race cars. It's something that could grow with him.
posted by TooFewShoes at 12:02 PM on October 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


For inspiration, take a look at the room tours on Apartment Therapy's sister-site, Ohdeedoh.
posted by brozek at 12:16 PM on October 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


If my son would only agree to it, I would love to paint his room a kind of soft celery or wasabi or lime green, to go with his navy, pale blue and lime green checked bed spread and navy window shade. He has a demin bed skirt, and I think navy and wasabi look bright and energetic for a boy's room. Alas he has nixed the idea.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 1:37 PM on October 23, 2010


I just repainted a lilac room with Martha Stewart's Sharkey Grey for my almost-2 year old son. I am 30 weeks pregnant and the low-VOCs made it possible - didn't even smell it. It went on really well and barely needed a second coat. His room is 11x11 and I barely cracked into the second gallon (they're about $27 each at Home Despot).

I've been finding cowboy-themed stuff on etsy and ebay, and re-used some stuff we already had. Dangit, I haven't posted the pictures on Flickr yet, but I'll do that and comment again with the link.

Anyway, so far it looks awesome, and I'm happy.
posted by kpht at 2:36 PM on October 23, 2010


We painted our son's room Corn Husk Green.

It's a very calm, bright color. I've gotten nothing but positive comments on it. If you get lots of sunlight in the room, it's awesome.

Really does depend on the room though.
posted by volatilebit at 2:55 PM on October 23, 2010


http://www.flickr.com/photos/madktdisease/51081 - sorry, such a terrible photo. Some toddler who will remain nameless got his fingerprints on the lens and I haven't yet cleaned it.

Anyway I really think the color is neutral enough to have a bunch of different uses as the boys grow - the color can stay, the accents and everything else can change.

Also, love your dining room. Our master bedroom is a very similar color.
posted by kpht at 3:00 PM on October 23, 2010


I always wanted a wall painted w/ chalkboard paint as a child. Maybe a section with that or dry-erase board paint? Like this. Rustoleum paint-on chalkboard is $25/can at Home Depot (not sure how much it covers though). Wall stickers are also fun.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:26 PM on October 23, 2010


Best answer: My Sunday morning fun while my family sleeps in! Thanks for the opportunity to play armchair decorator.

I am looking at your pictures, and seeing that it's not so much the walls that you need to consider, but all the stuff too. I'd keep your window frames and woodwork the same as the rest of the house for continuity. If you're going to have the one bookcase in red, I'd paint the other and the nightstand in the same colour as well. Or, those things should be bright and shiny white, and use lots of other white elements, and let the red bookcase stand out.

The right shades of green would be kind of okay in a house with so much orange, and would suit the dinosaur/jungle ideas; plus it would be bright yet not headache-inducing. A green that plays with the green in the quilt, but doesn't necessarily match it, would help make that fit the room better. (Also thinking of the whole house as one unit, so that the transition from room to room isn't jarring.)

Here is a lovely shade of green, in an eclectic and colourful kids' room shown with a red headboard that recalls your red bookcase.

Oscar's room is also a great shade of green, and what made me think of your room is that the bed is oriented like a daybed, which, if it's not going to be slept in yet, will keep it useful in the room. And since it's one of the biggest things in the room, I'd suggest putting a great comforter or bedspread on it, and that a solid or pattern in a complimentary, not matchy colour rather than a kids' design will keep it from fighting with the quilt above it. And consider getting a double-sized one, so that it goes down to the floor and hides the under-bed area so you can stash things. Finding a long bolster pillow or two would be great for this idea, and they don't have to be expensive.

A funky, shaggy rug in a shade of green would be great to play on (grass, jungle etc.) Or, zebra!

And last, maybe keep one door on the closet? If you're removing them to make the toys or something in it more accessible, then you can at least hide some of the clutter with the remaining one. And that one door would be a great place for some chalkboard paint, and way easier than painting a wall with it (and painting over it eventually!)

One other suggestion: You have lots of books (and two bookcases!) and that's great! Displaying some favourites face-forward (see the bookshelf in Oscar's room?) is great idea, not just because it looks nice, but because at two, kids choose books by the cover, and not the spine. And, though I normally hate the "everything in baskets" school of bookshelf organizing, grouping some of the books in bins or baskets will really help to keep them tidy (especially because kids books are always such weird sizes) and will help him to find them better if they're grouped in logical ways, like Dinos, cars, jungle animals, series, etc. And if you're feeling ambitious, a fun afternoon project can be to wallpaper the back of the taller bookshelf too.

Further to that, if you don't want to use a table lamp on the nightstand (understandable with some two-year olds, due to knocking-over issues), a pendant light of some sort suspended over the bed can add visual interest, provide ambient lighting rather than just overhead, and make snuggling up to read in there more inviting.

Other ideas:

Grouping the pictures you do have on the wall in the room already will make it look more cohesive. And wall stickers like these can help integrate his art into the room, and can provide neat places to group any dinosaur or jungle critter decals you may be using.




Okay! Family's up! I'd love to see the results! Thanks for the fun!

PS -- when he's actually sleeping in the room? A nice, solid-colour (or even this stripe, in paprika) thermal or blackout curtain really does help with the sleeping thing, even thought you've got a lovely view. If the rod is a little wider than the window, you can push the curtains all the way to the sides of it to keep it nice and large and let the light in.
posted by peagood at 6:38 AM on October 24, 2010


Response by poster: Wow, thanks everyone! Some great ideas.

peagood, that was awesome! Most of the stuff in the room is going to change (my husband is building my son a lovely bed right now), but I love the attention to what's in there now. See, that's the part I'm not good at--figuring out how it all goes together. Love the idea of the face-forward books!

OK, off to look at paint colors....
posted by devotion+doubt at 6:51 AM on October 24, 2010


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