Our Home: Designing The Big Boy Bedroom

With the baby rapidly outgrowing her crib, there’s an eviction notice in place in the nursery. As much as I’m not ready to admit that he’s growing up, the need for the cot means that we really need to move the toddler into a new bedroom. That’s right, we need to get the ‘Big Boy’ bedroom done.

A couple of months ago I started pulling together ideas for his new room; our taste is fairly classic and I want a space that will grow with him over the next few years. It needs to be calming, cosy and most importantly, sleep inducing! Since that first post we’ve had six months more of toddler-hood and with that comes a better understanding of what he might need. So, in an attempt to build upon my earlier ideas, here’s what we’re currently thinking…

The Colour Scheme

I’m in love with grey walls at the moment and I think this room will be no exception. I love the versatility of grey as a wall colour and the fact that it goes with so many other shades mean I can swap in different pops of colour over the years to refresh the room.

Our nursery has wooden flooring in with a large rug and whilst I love the effect, I think a room of this size needs a carpet. The room is at the front of the house and can be a little cold so carpeting will help keep the cosy factor up whilst also hopefully cushioning his elephant-stampede-like tendencies! I’ll be opting for a dark shade with a heavy fleck in it to help mask any toddler spills and marks over the years.

I’ll also be putting in some dark curtains. As tempting as it is to go for feature curtains or ones with prints, having a light sleeper has made me realise that my utmost priority is creating a dark bedroom for sleeping in. Sorry kiddo, we’ll be on plain dark grey ones with the thickest black out lining possible… I really hope it helps him snooze for longer!

Sleeping Arrangements

We’ve decided to keep him in our old double bed for now; there’s plenty of room for it and it means that there’s (hopefully) less chance of him falling out as he adjusts to the freedom of no cot bars. I was looking at putting in a wooden ‘house’ frame around it but on a double bed I think it will look too clunky and take over the room.

In the long term, we may consider putting bunk beds for kids in there to give the flexibility of extra space for friends to come to stay. At the moment, he’s a little too little for them (let’s face it, he’d be up that ladder and leaping off of the top bunk the minute we shut the door!) but in a couple of years, I know he’ll love them. It’s not a given but there’s also a possibility that we’ll bunk the kids in together for a few years. If we’d had two boys, this would have been far more likely and I don’t see why having a girl and a boy should make any difference to this. We’ll see!

Storage

We’ve got huge built in cupboards in the room and have decided after much deliberation to keep them in there. It just doesn’t seem sensible to rip them out and then have to buy more storage to put in their place. The toddler doesn’t need full length hanging space though so we’ll be popping some smaller storage inside to keep his clothes in and then continuing to store some of our bits and bobs in the rest of it. I’m tempted to just put box storage in again; it’s nice and accessible for him as he grows and will give plenty of space for his little wardrobe.

We have a beautiful playroom downstairs so there’s no need for toy storage upstairs. Ideally the room is just for sleeping so we’ll be storing books and stuffed toys in there and that’s it. Currently the books are all over the place in his room; he has so many! I’m still a little in love with the library storage style tables so if I can find a way to fit those in, they’ll be there.

I think that’s it for my early stages of planning. The next steps are to start putting it into place and coming up with a theme. I know he’s only two but I love a theme to a room! Keep an eye out over the next few weeks to see how we get on.