Aiden's New Room

It’s tricky to think about how to pull together a small boy’s room (that he will share with his new sibling for a bit) that will grow with him. I was pretty keen to put together a fun but classic room that he will love and is not too ‘designer’. I spend a lot of time looking at interior design magazines and blogs and sometimes the designs for kids are too kiddy or baby-ish. I don't think they would work for very long.

Months ago, probably around June, we went to have a look at some “big-boy beds”. Aiden had decided not long before then, that he no longer wanted to sleep in his cot. Despite not being a particularly physical/climbing kind of kid, he decided at 3am one morning that enough was enough and he would just climb out of his cot and land with a thump on his bedroom floor. Since that night he has been sleeping on a mattress on the floor.  A good mummy would have rushed out and bought him a bed the next day, but I’m just not that kind of mummy.

Firstly I was worried that he wouldn’t be able to get in and out of a big bed (and I didn't think it was worth spending the money on a toddler bed he would grow out of quickly) and secondly I still hadn’t decided how to decorate his bedroom.

Here are some "before" shots:

 

When we went to look at "big-boy beds" in June I saw a wide red and white strip bed-head. For those of you who watch too many American home decorator/do-it-yourself type lifestyle shows, you will understand that this was the “jumping-off point” for Aiden’s new room.  I thought about that bed head for months and how it would fit into his room, what colour I would paint the walls, what kind of linen would I get for his bed….Despite there being lots of different bed options for small boys, ones with storage drawers or a trundle bed underneath, bunk beds, I settled on a single ensemble that would work best with the bed head.

The walls have just been painted in Dulux Natural Embrace. It’s a warm neutral colour (I normally hate ‘neutrals’) but the colour will work with reds and blues that I had pictured for the room. Colours, which will grow with him and will work if our next baby is a girl. It’s also a colour that is modern but suits the Victorian style of the house, which can be a tricky combination to achieve.

After the painting:

We moved the Ikea Expedit bookcase from the middle of one of the long walls to towards the window. This freed up some space to have a full size single bed, a cot and a change table. We have a number of rooms to put Aiden and the new baby in (they could have separate rooms), but Aiden’s current room is right outside our bedroom and has a reverse cycle air conditioning unit. Because we live on one of Glebe’s busiest roads (Bridge Rd) the main bedroom and the room beside it (Aiden’s room) have been carefully soundproofed from the road noise so they need to have air-conditioning for cold winter and humid summer nights. I’m pretty keen to get both kids in that room.

Also all the other bedrooms are up or down stairs which will be a bit fraught in the middle of the night if we need to get to them.

Here is the finished result:

The walls are still bare and need some pictures and an electrician is coming next week to fix the intermittent light switch but Aiden's pretty happy with his new bed. He loves hopping in for a sleep and snuggling in under the covers.