Creating our playroom

So, it’s been a while since my last blog post but I am back and what’s more, I have a cracker for you all….! The children’s playroom (gosh it feels weird saying “children’s” rather than just “boys'” – but I have a little girl now so I must include all of them!), is now COMPLETE!

As you may have seen via my Instagram stories, this room is rather small which gave me quite a headache when deciding on how to best design the space for the children. It is long and narrow, perfect for when it was my home office but as a playroom, it is not so good.

After much deliberation over what storage solution to use in this room – whether to use off-the-shelf units (do you like the pun here!) or to opt for some bespoke joinery – we decided in the end to go with some fully integrated storage cube units and a bespoke curved desk. This was made by the same carpenter who made our lounge cupboards and shelves on either side of the fireplace.

Below are my initial illustrations which I gave to the carpenter of how I wanted this room to look.

To fit inside the storage cubes, I bought 6 rope storage baskets from the GLTC. I did consider more child-like storage baskets i.e. ones with stars or dinosaurs on but I want the children to be able to pull these baskets out and bring them into the lounge to play with the toys inside. My thinking is that these muted tones will work much better in my lounge rather than brightly coloured ones!

The curved desk is perfect for the room and doubles up as a workspace for the children to do homework on and to play with the Xbox.

To utilise every inch of the room, I wanted to mount book shelves on the wall behind the door as you enter. The only problem was that the walls either side of the window were too narrow for even the smallest book shelves I could find. So, I ended up buying Ikea spice racks which were only 40cm wide and painted them in satin white. At only £3 each, I saved myself quite a bit of money and they do the job just as well!

The feature wallpaper is from Cole and Son and is called ‘WOODS’, I bought this from Wallpaper Direct. The desk lamp is the FORSA work lamp from Ikea.

The “PLAY TIME is the BEST TIME” print is from Alice’s Accessories and is framed in a Ribba frame from Ikea.

I bought this cute little Eames style child’s chair from P and N Homewares on Etsy

We used Ikea’s DIGNITET curtain wire and RIKTIG curtain hooks to create an artwork display wall which I’m really pleased with.

And finally, the black and white striped runner is from Tiger in their St Albans store and the White BRANAS baskets are from Ikea. The walls are painted in Farrow and Ball’s Wimborne White.

Thanks for reading x