Colourful DIY & Vintage Adventure Boy Room

Description

As we are lucky enough to have a playroom elsewhere in the house, our boys' bedrooms (see also Jesse's Rustic Vintage DIY Boy Nursery) were intended to be spaces where they can enjoy some quiet time: reading, dressing, sleeping, hanging out. That said, we used to have a rug in here, but the floor has become such a transformative space for play and imagination that the rug now lives beneath a tepee in the playroom and the floor is bare so that it can be covered in whatever ‘worlds’ our children decide to make.

Design Inspiration

Adventure, travel, vintage, being a kid.

Our focus was filling the room with what excites Harry (his first word was 'car'; he loves clocks and animals and anything transport; he has been on plenty of planes), with things that mean something to us and with gifts from friends and family.

Decorating Style

Vintage, DIY, eclectic, rustic, textural. Simple basics and interesting details. When it comes to kids, though, it's about them as individuals, about fun, about wonder and about how little people use space.

Project Details

An IKEA MALM chest of drawers and hand-me-down pipeline trundle bed provide a backdrop for the mélange of layered textures, patterns and objects.

The green license plate and car-gear clock, the paper plane decals, the 'HARRY' wooden airplane blocks, the Route 66 bunting and the vintage metal cars are all sourced from fabulous etsy sellers. The snow domes are a collection of some of our favourite travel destinations. The animal floor pillows are from Morocco.

Bedding and car decals: Hiccups.

Deer hook: Urban Outfitters.

Scrabble tile: Typo.

Red Moroccan leather ottoman: Table Tonic.

The room includes some of my own DIY creations: the mobile made from paper airplanes I folded out of maps, the 'You Can Do Anything' canvas (a saying of my husband's which I thought was a perfect maxim for our son), the map paper planes strung from the ceiling, the wooden name signs (Route 66 style one using MDF board and acrylic paint, with his name and birth year; and the picket-post one using an an old wooden picket and AlphaArt letters).

It is also full of things from my creative family: the ‘Keep Calm’ canvas is by my sister, the beanbags and Raggedy Andy doll and hand-crocheted blanket are by my mother, the giraffe art is by my grandmother, the wall painting was painted by my mum (for by brother actually, in 1984).