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Before & after: A colourful and clever kids' room makeover

Tidy, inspiring and fun! - by Better Homes and Gardens
  • 27 May 2021

Giving your kids' room a makeover is a great excuse to splash out on colour and display, but when you have two children sharing the same small space, you have to consider the needs and tastes of both. 

WATCH: Tara Dennis transforms a girls' bedroom into a boho paradise

 

Storage solutions and functionality are crucial, and fairness is key, but the fun factor will top the list for your littlies. So focus on pops of colour and cool play areas - your kids will love it!

These five fun and functional decorating ideas that bring back creativity and banish boredom, ‘go to your room’ will no longer be considered words of warning.

Drab shared kids' bedroom with blue walls

Before. The uninspiring kids' room lacked storage and room to play.

Chris Jones

1. Room for activities

Let their imaginations run wild by building a play station at the end of their bed – and we don’t mean the digital kind. A three-cube storage unit is the perfect base to make this clever piece, framed in pre-cut 16mm MDF then glued and screwed together.

Round the corners to make it kid-friendly, then apply a water-based primer. Paint the outside in a hardwearing topcoat colour to match your bed frame and the inside in chalkboard paint. An extra insert piece of MDF, primed, painted and covered in faux turf or an offcut of vinyl flooring, makes an ideal changeable floor for each play station.

Chalkboard play station with dollhouse and storage

This toy box doubles as a 'play station'.

Chris Jones
Chalk holder attached to blackboard

Keep chalk organised by attaching a handy holder to the chalkboard.

Chris Jones

2. Favourite colours

Come bedtime, provide your kids with the cutest and most colourful spot to slumber. Paint solid timber bed frames – here, vintage finds – in a colour to suit your scheme. Sand, apply water-based primer, then finish with a hardwearing water-based topcoat in white and a highlight colour-pop.

To ensure the kids’ room always looks considered, mix and match bedding and accessories to a complementary colourway – try blues and greens or pinks and peachy tones. 

Blue kids bed

The bed frames were painted in each child's favourite colour.

Chris Jones
Pink coloured bed frame in shared bedroom

To keep the room feeling cohesive, try to match the bed linen to the colour of the bed frame.

Chris Jones

3. Playful storage

Armed with a roll of masking tape and a selection of coloured chalkboard paints, you can transform a plain, pre-primed chest of drawers into a colourful work of art.

Puzzles, dolls, cars and crafts, or undies, socks and pyjamas – once your child has decided what goes where, use dust-free chalk to write up the contents of each drawer.

Drawers decorated with colourful chalkboard paint

The storage cabinet in the middle of the room brings the entire colour scheme together.

Chris Jones
Toy stored in chest

Each drawer has been painted with a mix of colourful chalkboard paints.

Chris Jones

4. Chalkboard toy chest

If your kids adore to draw (especially on the walls), ensure their creativity knows no bounds by painting a large vertical surface in chalkboard paint.

Here, boring wardrobe doors have been transformed into an artist’s canvas by masking up sections, then priming and painting in various colours.

For side-by-side bands of colour, paint one section, leave to dry, then re-mask and paint the next section, and so on. 

Cars on top of toy chest

The second toy chest has been decorated with green felt to resemble grass.

Chris Jones
Child's stool in front of chalkboard

Encourage your kids' creativity by painting a large chalkboard wall.

Chris Jones
  • DIY
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  • Kids Bedroom Ideas
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