bedroom

How I styled my daughter’s small bedroom

My youngest daughter, Annabel, turns 9 later this year and had outgrown the childish baby pink decor in her small bedroom. It was time for a mini bedroom project and she wanted to make sure she was involved!! She completely ran the project in many ways – instructing me clearly on the aspects of the room she didn’t like and the colour she wanted on the walls… but more on that later!

The first thing we did was get rid of the existing loft bed. It was an IKEA one similar to this one and although it incorporated plenty of storage and sleeping space within a singular piece of furniture, it took up almost half her bedroom floor space, making the room feel cramped and busy. It’s not a big bedroom by any means, but not a ‘box room’ either, so we felt there must be a better way of maximising on the space available.

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Decor tips for a teen girl’s bedroom

I recently took it upon myself to revamp my eldest daughter’s bedroom. We gave her room an express makeover when we first moved house over three years ago, but I recently decided to remove some old wallpaper, meaning it all needed skimmed and repainted again.

This time around, however, my 12 year old wanted a say in her bedroom’s design and I suppose, why not? She’s the one who has to spend most of her time there, so it needs to be a space she can relax and feel comfortable in.

Updating older children’s and teenagers’ bedrooms is a tricky task, as you want the room to ‘grow’ with the child so that you’re not faced with the ongoing expense of redecorating it every couple of years. We all know teen girls can be incredibly fickle in their tastes, so getting it right from the outset is no mean feat! So… if you’re planning a teenage girl’s room, I thought I would share some styling tips with you to help you along the way to bedroom perfection!

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Room Makeover: Our master bedroom revamp

Although we’ve been in our current home just over three years, there always seems to be a project to finish off. I wonder whether it will always be like that? (My husband says yes, if married to me…)

Our master bedroom is one such project; having ripped up the old green carpet and rid the room of the 1980s glazed slide robe, the room pretty much stayed stripped back and waiting for its makeover for almost a year. There just always seemed to be another, more pressing, job to save up for. Sound familiar?

This is how the room looked back at the beginning of 2017 before we had our new furniture chosen, walls painted or carpet fitted…

Shortly after the new carpet went down, we ordered a bed frame from MADE. I always loved the design of the wooden Ercol beds, so was delighted to find the Penn bed, which is really similar in style, but comfortably within our budget! We topped it with an IKEA HÖVAG mattress that was previously gifted to me for the purpose of a blog post I wrote some time ago in collaboration with IKEA (which you can read here). We also bought a desk for the corner of the room for me to use as a dressing table; I’ve detailed more about it further below.

It took me a while to choose a paint colour for the room, however after much deliberation, I settled for Farrow & Ball’s Peignoir, a beautifully soothing soft pink with just a hint of grey. Perfect for a calming bedroom scheme. The room pretty much stayed like this for a year, however I just felt it was missing something. It was only when I moved a Canadian art print (that my uncle and aunt in Ontario had given us for our wedding), onto the space above the bed, that I felt inspired to create a colour scheme around it that would add a bit of depth and interest to the room.

I put together a basic mood board to pull my thoughts together and keep me focused:

Taking into account the colours in the painting, I chose another Farrow & Ball colour, Inchyra Blue, for the wall behind the bed, which marries really nicely with the Peignoir. Inchyra Blue is more of a deep teal shade than a dark blue, so it’s really warmed the room up and made it feel like a cosy haven to retire to at the end of the day. I also love how the pale oak bed frame looks against it. This change spurred me on to finish off other aspects of the room, to the point where I can finally show you how it’s progressed from the bland beige ‘boudoir’ it once was.

So, here’s how the room is looking now!

Isn’t the Inchyra Blue just THE most gorgeous colour? It’s so cosy, yet if I’m sitting reading in bed, the room still feels light around me, rather than dark and heavy. I found the bedside rug in IKEA – chosen because it breaks up the grey carpet (a slight regret of mine to go grey with the carpets… on hindsight I think an oatmeal/neutral floor covering is more versatile), and it also ties in the dark teal colour of the wall.

I bought the little desk from La Redoute (the Jimi desk), which I use as a dressing table after years of drying my hair on the floor in front of a mirror! Feels very extravagant now :)

The round mirror is from The Range (similar one here) and the wall-mounted beside lamps are good old IKEA RANARP ones which are great, because you can angle them away if reading in bed whilst your partner is sleeping.

I picked up the bamboo lampshade in B&Q recently, having had a bog standard white drum shade hanging here for a while. I love the dappled light it casts come evening time. B&Q is becoming a great place for finding home accessories that don’t cost the earth and you can fire them in the big trolley with your paint and sandpaper and the husband never notices! Win win!

We more often have plain white bedding on the bed, but I do still love this boho style patterned set I bought from H&M a while back. It’s nice for a change, although I don’t think they stock it any longer. The cushion covers are from H&M too and generally move around my house a lot! The bed blanket adds to the cosy factor and is a beautiful wool one I was gifted some time ago for work I did with local homeware company, Murmur.

I also have plan to make a pair of curtains for in here and am considering using IKEA fabric for budget purposes – this one is a great colour match to the room, so I must get on with it before it goes out of stock. (It’s not a great picture of it online, but if you look at the canvas bag hanging on my peg rail further down, it’s made from the same fabric!)

This is a gorgeous little peg rail I picked up in H&M a while back, although they are quite often sold out… can you tell I absolutely LOVE H&M Home products?! So well designed at such a good price point. The little glass globe plant hanger is from Söstrene Grene… wish I had bought a few of these!

We had IKEA PAX wardrobes fitted at this side of the room where the old slide robes used to be. They are an absolute must-have if you want good storage solutions on a tight budget! We have loved them and I find the central mirrored door handy for when I’m getting ready to go out (when my kids allow me 5 mins to check myself out!!)

Just had to include a pic of this little old lady enjoying the sun!

This is the view out onto the landing. I feel it’s important to consider a colour scheme for your room that flows well with the adjacent spaces in your home. It helps make your home feel calm and connected.

So, that’s how my bedroom is looking! Just the curtains to sort out, then I can tick it off the list… I’m looking forward to showing you my daughter and son’s bedrooms soon, too. Again, they just needed tweaked to finish them off, but it’s great to finally feel as though the home has our stamp on it outside of the main living areas downstairs.

Have you any home projects on the go that you’ve put off for a while?

K x

Why you need to embrace ‘hygge’ at home this January

At the turn of the New Year, it can be a struggle to make our homes feel cosy once the twinkly lights and Christmas decorations have been taken down. For many of us, the January home can feel bare, a little empty and uninviting, yet at this deepest stage of midwinter, it’s more important than ever to create a warming, welcoming atmosphere in the home.

Embracing a little ‘hygge’ in our everyday lives does wonders for the soul, whilst encouraging us to huddle down and embrace, rather than fight, these sometimes murky and cold January days. It’s about making time for yourself, savouring something as simple as wrapping your hands around your early morning coffee, a quiet moment with a book, candlelight in the evening, a shared meal with friends and family, a long walk in the woods, wrapping up in a blanket by the fire… these are all feel-good moments, rituals and activities that are in everyone’s everyday, but we often take them for granted, preferring to focus on the bad weather, the cold evenings, the grey skies of January…

Making small changes at home can help ease your path through these long winter weeks, so whilst trying to create a hygge-positive ambience in my own home, I wanted to share with you some simple ways you too can benefit from this Danish way of living. To help me along, I have chosen a selection of pieces from locally-based company Murmur. Designed in-house at their Northern Irish studio, Murmur’s products and patterns are influenced by the simple aesthetics of Scandinavian and Japanese design. The brand’s relaxed, informal style, where every product works in harmony with the next, is built upon a design ethos whereby simple designs and textured finishes translate into beautiful, practical pieces that can be enjoyed and used in the everyday; a key element in the concept of hygge.

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Some Bedroom Plans + A Moodboard

Hello, hello! Ahhh, it’s so good to be back on here after my July break – we spent almost three weeks camping in France, some of which I tried to share via my Insta feed, however those of you who have had a similar kinda holiday will know how difficult wifi can be to search out!! Maybe that’s a good thing in disguise? It is however nice to be home again, back in our little bubble that’s home.

One thing we decided whilst we were away was that we needed to start thinking about our plans for our bedroom. It’s practically the only room in the house that we haven’t touched, however the bare floorboards (I took it upon myself to pull up the tatty old carpet some months ago – don’t even ask), jumbled together furnishings and partly wallpapered walls simply need to be tackled head-on! It’s reached the stage of no turning back, folks…

Which brings me to writing this post. I have a few ideas scrambling around in my brain about the kind of bedroom I want and three keywords keep popping back up: tranquil, light, scandi. So I figure this is where it’s at! Every successful interior scheme begins with a simple moodboard, often created and grown from something as simple as a few key words or singular item in a room, and I always find them a fascinating insight into the direction an interior project is headed, so I want to share mine with you, along with some interior inspiration gathered up from Pinterest and, of course, a look at a handful of always-so-covetable shopping items from my ever-expanding wish list (it WILL become a short-list, eventually, I promise!). Why not follow the planning process with me and hopefully I’ll be paintbrush firmly in hand come September!

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Win at Sleeping with Ikea: Reaping the Benefits of Better Sleep

If you’ve been following the blog lately, you’ll know that over the past few weeks we’ve had the amazing opportunity of working with IKEA on their ‘Win at Sleeping’ campaign, which runs until the end of March.

The campaign is aimed at improving the nation’s quality of sleep by encouraging us all to make a few small changes to how we prepare for sleep. This can be anything from creating a calm, cosy and restful bedtime environment to adjusting our personal sleeping habits to ensure a full and undisturbed night’s slumber.

I met with IKEA back in February to discuss my own family’s sleep issues and they were able to recommend some strategies and products for us to try, with a view to helping us improve on several sleep-related areas. If you’d like to see the products we chose to try out, you can read up about it here!

Now that we’ve been using the products for a month, I wanted to update you on how we’ve got on, as well as take a quick look at some other IKEA products you might want to consider trying out yourself.

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Win at Sleeping with Ikea: Making Changes to Improve our Sleep

If you’ve been following the blog lately, both here and over on my Instagram feed, you’ll know I’ve been working with IKEA on their Win at Sleeping campaign. With the aim of helping us solve our sleep issues and, in turn, our health and wellbeing, the campaign is centred around what small changes we can make at home to improve our nighttime routine, sleeping habits and general sleep preparation.

As I talked about in my first post in this series last week, we have worked with IKEA to identify our own family’s sleep problems and in order to try to solve them, we will be trying out some IKEA products over the coming weeks. We were very excited to take delivery of the products at the beginning of this week and after lots of flat pack fun in the ensuing days, I can finally show you what we chose to try out in the hope of better sleep preparation and comfort ahead…
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Win at Sleeping with Ikea: Solving our Family’s Sleep Problems

I don’t know about you, but these cold, dark mornings are making me feel really lazy and lethargic when it comes to getting out of my warm bed at the start of the day. I’ve also never been that good at getting myself organised and off to bed early during the week; the draw of on-demand telly whilst cocooned in a thick blanket on the couch, being my particular downfall. Who’s with me on this? Or perhaps you find yourself scrolling through Pinterest, searching for the answer to your dream kitchen cupboard colour – been there? Thought so. We are all depriving ourselves of wholesome sleep for every minute we waste on our tablets or phones when it’s past our bedtime, and in the morning when the alarm goes off, we pay for it.

I was therefore really excited to be contacted by the lovely folk at IKEA, asking me to work with them on their Win at Sleeping campaign, which you may have noticed recently on TV and in the press. It’s no secret that as a nation, we aren’t great sleepers, with many of us struggling to get a decent eight hours’ kip on a regular basis. The fast pace of modern life, along with the addictive pull of ever present smartphones and tablets with their stimulating blue screens, is certainly a major contributing factor, however many of our sleep problems have startlingly simple roots, such as inadequate sleep preparation, bad sleeping habits or a poorly organised bedroom environment.

IKEA are determined to promote better sleep for all of us and for good reason, too. There are countless benefits to be had from sleeping well, including better mood, raised energy levels, improved productivity at work and school, as well as positive health effects, such as improved memory, a sharper mind and lower stress levels. And the best thing about it? It only takes making a few small changes to guarantee ‘The Wonderful Everynight’ that we all need…

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Student Dorm Decor: Get the Look for Less

When I packed my bags and went off to uni all those years ago, I arrived into an empty shell of a student dorm room where the most personalising I did to the space was to make my bed up with my duvet cover from home and throw a few books and framed photos onto the shelves – and it pretty much stayed that way for the entire four years!

Roll on (ahem!) twenty years and I’m pleased to see that things have definitely moved on. Students renting rooms have a plethora of choice when it comes to shopping to customize that little square of space to call their own, from the mainstream movers such as Ikea with their low priced lighting and furnishing designs to the more individual and quirky styles found at the likes of Urban Outfitters and H&M. When it comes to dorm room decor, there really is no excuse to have to splurge out more cash than you have to – lighting, storage and bedding in particular can be picked up at very reasonable prices and in pretty cool designs; you just have to be a little creative in your shopping sometimes!

So, whether you’re a fresher student heading off to your first term at college, a newbie graduate renting for the first time or even a parent who’s looking for cool pieces for their teenager’s bedroom, I’ve been taking a look at how you can get the look for less…

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How to create a cosy bedroom sanctuary

With the colder season already creeping in, there is nothing more welcome at the end of a long day trudging to and from school and work than crawling into a well made bed, wrapping yourself up under layer upon layer of snuggly, dreamy softness. The only thing is, there’s more to achieving that wonderfully luxurious and cosy bedroom than simply throwing an extra blanket over the bed, so here are some tips on how to create your perfect autumn/winter bedroom sanctuary… …