Welcome back to the Cottage Makeover series where I update the kid’s cottage room! I show you how you can create beautiful spaces with some simple strategies that can work for any room and any style, all with some paint!
In this blog, I’m going to take this cluttered, overstuffed, pine toned room and brighten it up to make it a unique kids’ room with a modern pastel twist of colour! Join me to see how I transform this space…
to this space…
with some de-cluttering and a little paint magic!
The Kid’s Cottage Room
As a parent, there’s nothing more special than being able to create a beautiful bedroom space for your child. This is where you get to see them playing, creating and crafting. A space where you create memories with them to last a lifetime. From reading them bedtime stories and tucking them into bed to waking them up in the morning. This kid’s cottage room makeover really touches my heart. I used simple DIYs that you can do with your child and soft colours that grow with your little ones.
Kids’ rooms come in all sizes and styles. Often we go to bright primary colours or themes. However, I wanted to create a room of serenity & calmness. It was important to have a space to keep all the kids’ toys in the bedroom. This would prevent cluttering the main family living room with kids’ stuff.
Brightening Up the Space
This small room was overtaken with plain wood walls and furniture. I started this cottage room makeover by removing all of the furniture and creating a blank slate to work with. I started to map out the floor space and questioned what was absolutely necessary to have in this room. For me, it was ample floor space for playing and bright walls to really open up the space.
To brighten up the space, I first went with white for the trim. Immediately this brightened the entire space. I always paint trim straight white as it works well with all colours. It was important that the theme flowed with the rest of the cottage so I wanted to maintain the pastel colours. I decided on Little Whale, the perfect pale blue. Against the crisp white Casement trim, the colour really pops.
Painting the walls was easy! I only needed 2 coats of Casement for the trim and 1 coat of Little Whale for the walls. I didn’t need to do any special prep, I just removed any dust & cobwebs and painted straight onto the wood. Since this is a cottage, I don’t mind if eventually, the pine knots come through the colour. But, if I was concerned about the pine knots coming through, I could spot prime those with a shellac sealer to prevent future bleed through.
Seeing the bright white trim and the pastel-coloured walls, this room is almost unrecognizable! This little room now feels so airy and inviting.
Lighting
The lighting changes in this cottage room were simple, yet effective. I added a new ceiling light to modernise the space and a barely-there plug in wall sconce, perfect for bedtime stories.
Kid’s Room Furniture
When it comes to the furniture layout for this room, less is more. I wanted to keep it minimal because the more floor space for kids to play on, the better! Bunk beds are a natural space saver and perfect for sleepovers. All it needed was a fresh paint job. I used Casement to match the rest of the room. What makes this bunk bed extra amazing, is that there are pull out drawers under the bed and in the staircase. These drawers easily store all of the toys and clothing! This is a huge space saver which is so important in a cottage. Since I didn’t need any more furniture in the room it kept the open floor plan for kids to play.
I love how the bunk bed adds style and functionality to this small space. With the queen size on the bottom, and the single on the top you can now fit 3 people into this room, perfect for a kid’s sleepover! For the bedding, I chose a nautical theme of anchors in dark blue on a white backdrop. Classic for this kids cottage room theme.
To enhance the nautical theme, I added natural elements to this room. A large whitewashed wood stump beside the bed acts as a unique side table, with a matching coat rack on the wall set at a child’s height for easy access. We purchased them from a local business Oliver Woods Designs
The Flooring
To brighten up the space and match the whitewashed elements in the room, I replaced the flooring with White Oak hardwood. This helped complete the cottage makeover by creating a light and airy feel.
Decor for a Kid’s Cottage Room
I installed blackout blinds as well as a set of blackout curtains, as we know those summer nights it’s so difficult to get our kids to bed at a decent time with the light being so bright until quite late.
A few other additions were the Macramé sailing knots hanging from the wall and colourful painted wood beads. A DIY stencil wall art whale is a fun nautical project that I loved doing. Check out the video here for how I created the DIY stencilled wall art.
There are so many DIYs that you can do with your children to make them part of a cottage makeover or any room makeover. They can help choose their paint colours, test them on the walls with you, help you paint, or paint small accents that will go in the room such as a storage bin or wall art! If you’re going to involve your children, a couple of helpful tips would be to keep the selection limited to a choice of 2-3 colours. Otherwise, it can be quite overwhelming for them! This way you can also control the direction you would like the room to go in! Remember to be patient, and have fun. The experience is in the journey. Watching children play with paint and colour is so inspiring.
The Extra Details
Every room door is painted the main theme colour that’s inside! This is a fun little detail we did throughout the cottage makeover that welcomes you to the theme of the room.
Even though the colours were simple in this cottage room makeover, only using white and blue, the impact is incredible. During the daytime, I love how the sunlight comes in and fills the space beautifully. It’s calming, serene and inspiring space for play and sleep.
Let us know in the comments below what you think of this transformation of our kid’s cottage room and what colour your kids want their room painted!
See the full Kids cottage room reveal here.
Let us know what you think in the comments and be sure to tag us on social with your projects @Fusionmineralpaint.