Jenna:
I started the concept of Quinn's Room with the colors I wanted:Aqua Blue, Orange & Grey. I can't remember where I got my initial inspiration for those colors, but color is where the room started. It was important for me to have a room that was very little boy inspired but still masculine. I'm not a fan of sports themes or any of the typical "boy room" designs so I stuck to bold patterns, simple ikea furniture & beautifully painted walls. I had five versions of the aqua i eventually used on my wall for a month! I sent over my ideas to my designer friend, Kirsten & she helped me find the striped bedding from West Elm & the beautiful rug from CB2. Both bold patterned pieces I think make the room! I love being in Quinn's room, it is cheerful, happy & calming & the perfect room for my little boy.
Emily:
When we found out we were having a boy, it was around Christmastime and my husband had this awesome teal cashmere sweater that he would wear. It was the coziest thing ever, I wore it around all Winter. I fell in love with the color so I took the sweater to Home Depot and had them color match it! It represented comfort to me, and isn't that what a nursery is all about? We knew we couldn't do more than one wall teal without the already small room feeling smaller, so we painted one, picked a complimentary lighter blue for the others. To add texture my husband installed some pine flooring on the one wall, with original plans to do a high gloss white, but we sort of loved the natural wood, so it stayed!
We are huge music lovers and had a collection of concert posters that we wanted to put up in the nursery. They all had a mustard yellow hue to them, so that became the secondary color throughout the room. I was like Jenna in the sense that even though it was a nursery, I wanted it to feel masculine and ageless. The gallery wall helped with that tremendously. I found a super cheap rust colored rocker, and threw that in for good measure. By now my color scheme was all over the place, so my goal with the crib bedding was to tie it all in some how. Low and behold I found this adorable woodland creature print with you guessed it, mustard, teal, rust, and light blue. My husband built the shelves and hanging racks into the standard closet, and an Ikea shelving system gave us extra storage.
Thank you Jenna and Emily for sharing your inventive kids' rooms with us!
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Kristen at 6th Street Design School kicks off her series this week and I'm honored to have chimed in with what works in our house as it pertains to kids + good design.