Furnishing a home is expensive, friends.
During an extensive renovation of our home, we worked with an amazing designer — Amy Hirsch of Amy Aidinis Hirsch Design (@amyhirsch) — who provided us with invaluable architectural and interior design assistance. But when it came to our children’s rooms, professional help and expensive furnishings were absolutely not in the budget.
Today, I’m going to walk you through how I pulled together my son Carsten’s relatively inexpensive bedroom as it transitioned from a nursery. While it’s a child’s room, it doesn’t necessarily feel like one, and many of the design and cost-saving strategies I employed in his room could work in any bedroom. Below is the process I took; I think you’ll see that it’s not very different than the one you’d take.
Determine Items You Already Have: It’ll Dictate Room Design
I wanted to make big changes to Carsten’s room, but there were a few nursery items that I knew I would have to keep. The first were the roman shades. They’re custom, but were more affordable because I used a local tradesperson who works independently and charges less. I think I spent $1000 on them (including installation), which still sounds stupid expensive, but it’s a huge window and the only one in the room. As I started thinking about designing Carsten’s room, I initially wanted to punch myself for picking these roman shades because they had a pattern and color palette with which I would need to coordinate the rest of the room. I hated that this particular item was going to wag the design dog. In the end, however, it ended up being a boon, as it helped me focus the room’s design direction almost immediately.
I also kept a few additional items from Carsten’s nursery that I purchased from Restoration Hardware Baby and Child before his birth: the Harrison dresser in a darker finish than currently available, a dark blue wool rug that I thought I would be replacing but ended up working in the room, and a slipcovered wingback glider that I plan to keep in the room until he needs a desk. Finally, I also kept the CB2 oversized industrial dome pendant light that I believe cost around $150 (unfortunately, it’s no longer available).
As I’ll discuss in more detail later, I also ended up keeping much of the art and tabletop accessories I had in the room. If anything didn’t work with the end design I would have given it away or sold it, but most worked well enough with the room and I didn’t see the point in replacing items just to replace them.
Find Inspiration Online: Pinterest and Instagram Are Your Friends
The internet can be a horrible and scary place at times, but not when you’re trying to design a room. There’s so much inspiration out there for novice designers. For this project, Pinterest was instrumental. Keeping that roman shade in mind, I did a lot of searches on Pinterest using some combination of the words “boy,” “bedroom,” and “blue.” Then, I created a Pinterest board with some of my favorite rooms:
My board made it clear that I was leaning towards a midcentury inspired room. I really loved the idea of doing a paneled wall, like that first photo in the above gallery. As I spent some time thinking about it, I realized that while the materials would be inexpensive, paid labor would not, and I didn’t think I could handle that sort of DIY job with two small kids. Since I was doing all of the labor myself, I just painted the wall anchoring the bed a dark blue, painting the other walls a crisp white. I scoured Pinterest for the best Benjamin Moore blues. I really liked Soot and Hale Navy, but I was nervous that the former would read more black than dark blue so I went with the latter. The other three walls were painted in Decorators White, which is a slightly off-white white that is crisp (but not stark). I highly suggest going to Pinterest when picking a color for your room, as there are so many great guides available.
Pick Furniture You Love, But Always Consider Function and Space First
Next was the fun part: shopping. I focused first on the bed and side table vignette, because everything else would flow from those pieces. For me, precise measuring was very important, as the wall on which I was anchoring the bed was short and interrupted by the door to his bathroom. I really wanted there to be a symmetry to the room, with two nightstands bookending the bed. In order to achieve that with my limited space, I knew I needed a narrow bed frame and small nightstands. Like the window treatment, this annoying thing that limited my design choices was also helpful, because it also narrowed the potential field of items that worked in the room.
I first considered what bed I wanted. I love the look of a wood headboard or a metal bed, but I didn’t think that either would function well in my son’s room. He cute but very reckless, and if he’s jumping on his bed, I’d rather an upholstered headboard break his fall. Most fully upholstered beds I found tended to have a bed frame too large for the space AND were expensive, so I looked around for a headboard that I could attach to a simple frame. After some searching, I found this super simple linen-blend headboard with a pretty French seam from One King’s Lane. I liked that it was clean and easy, and was cohesive with the slipcovered glider and window treatment. And, at less than $400 including delivery and tax, it was basically a no brainer. Next, I looked for bed frames. I liked the look of wood ones but ultimately decided to save money here and went with a simple full size metal bed frame from Wayfair that was $134 with delivery.
Next, I moved on to the side tables. This was a relatively easy search because I knew I wanted something inexpensive and straightforwardly midcentury modern, AND it had to be less than 20 inches wide. The Parocela nightstand, available at Wayfair at $150 each, checked those boxes for me. These came assembled and shipped free, and are pretty well-made considering the cost, so they were a great buy.
Dress Up the Space, Again Considering Function and Cost
I now had all of the furniture for the room, so it was time to decorate. I found this great framed canvas photo of a Highland cow at Target. It was perfect for over a full size bed, and was only $75 for such a big piece. I also picked sconces for either side of the headboard rather than table lamps because they felt right with the midcentury vibe I wanted. I was also sure that Carsten would break a table lamp within hours of its placement, so sconces — especially ones that could be retracted so he wouldn’t bump his head during play — met my functional needs. I found these great midcentury inspired Regan sconces at RH Teen that I purchased for $165 each. The finish also felt a little industrial, so they coordinated well with the pendant light without feeling matchy-matchy.
Sconce placement was entirely dictated by the location of the studs in the wall. We have a pocket door that retracts into the wall right behind bed and table situation, so I needed to make sure that any hardware used to hold up these sconces — which are actually quite heavy — didn’t damage the pocket door or hinder its function. I was having trouble deciding whether I wanted them over the end tables or the headboard, but once again a potential problem was the decision-maker.
Next, I chose bedding. I will almost always recommend white or cream bedding for any bedroom. It looks clean and crisp, is easy to wash, and obviously goes with everything. I’d purchased a Fieldcrest linen duvet cover set in Sour Cream at Target for my daughter’s bedroom, and I liked it enough to repurchase for my son’s room. The color looks VERY yellow on the Target website but is more of a cream IRL. To dress up the bed, I purchased Bastideaux Bogo pillow covers in Midnight from Linen + Cloth, a great Etsy shop; the owner, Michelle, was helpful and confirmed that the pillows would be the dark, almost blue-black color I wanted.
Repurpose! Repurpose! Repurpose!
All other bedding was repurposed from other parts of the house. The smaller cream throw pillows were in my sunroom. I’m not sure where they came from but I liked the way they paired with the Linen + Cloth pillows. The throw is from Restoration Hardware (no longer available), and was in my guest room. And that oversized lumbar was a serendipitous and inexpensive Homegoods purchase made a few years ago knowing I’d eventually use it somewhere. Also repurposed was that primitive bench at the end of his bed. When I saw it at Homegoods for $99, I snatched it up immediately. It had floated around the house — in the guest room, in a hallway, in the mudroom — before finding its home in Carsten’s room.
All of the additional artwork, tabletop items, and shelving in his room are repurposed from his nursery. The bridge bookshelf was from Pottery Barn Kids. Those framed llamas were purchased for $25 each at TJMaxx, the cars above the dresser were purchased on Etsy, and the framed train art was purchased at RH Baby & Child. Are they perfect in the room? Absolutely not. But they’re good enough for now.
Don’t have anything to repurpose? You’re in luck, because there are so many great places to shop on a budget. Target! Homegoods! Homesense! TJMaxx! Online, you can find some great inexpensive tabletop items at CB2 and West Elm. For art, Juniper Print Shop is a great and affordable online store where you can buy prints as either a digital download or as a print. You can either send those prints or digital files to Framebridge, or buy frames at Target or Michaels and attempt to frame yourself.
I hope this post helps you with your own amateur designing. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments.
