Room to Grow in a Colorful Boy’s Bedroom

We’re on a roll updating the farmhouse and today I’m so excited to post photos of Felix’s room! While most of my decorating preferences lean towards neutrals, I just love color in kids’ rooms. I incorporated many of the items from Felix’s bright nursery (first here and updated here) from our old house but went bold with colorful walls, ceiling and door. Come on in and lemme show you around!

PAINT

Is it sacrilegious to use paint chips from one company and have them matched elsewhere? If so I’m going to decorating hell because that’s exactly what I did in this room. The pale blue walls are ‘Poolside’ from Benjamin Moore, but filled at Lowe’s using Valspar Signature in a matte finish. Ditto goes for the ceiling (China Blue) and darker walls (Blueberry). I’ve used a couple of brands of paint in the past month and I think the middle range paints are very comparable. But if you want the Cadillac of paint, Aura from Benjamin Moore is really superior (I used it on his door in Yosimite Blue and a satin finish) and the coverage and final look are incredible. It’s pricey and I only bought a quart, but it was worth it.

NOTE: I’ve edited these photos to reflect the paint colors I see in real life, but all screens will display them differently. I absolutely recommend taking home paint swatches before committing to a full gallon!

BED

As you can see, we’ve upgraded to a full sized bed, but we’ve actually had it for a while now. Adam did a ton of research and based on his findings, we bought a Casper mattress (not sponsored, but you can get $75 off if you use my promo code). We also have a foam mattress in our room and I think Felix’s is better. In fact, both parents regularly zonk out in there when we put him to bed and because it doesn’t have springs, it’s easier to Houdini out once he’s off in dreamland. 

Behind it, check out that amazing Jenny Lind headboard. Errr… footboard! I bought it last weekend at this amazing garage sale for… $4.50. The real headboard was falling apart so I asked if I could just take this end. I cleaned it and then painted it using Valspar Signature in Lovely Love Song with a satin finish. I SHOULD HAVE PRIMED IT because it took about five coats. I wanted to apply them thinly as to not get brush strokes (which are still kinda there) but I also came away from it thinking… I found this, I updated this, this is not a factory finish, and I’m ok with that. 

The sheets and quilt are what inspired the painting pallet at the start of this project. Big thanks to my mom who generously bought them for us! We chose the Pillowfort whale watching sheets, a navy bed skirt and a two toned navy quilt (it photographs more colbalt, but it’s a true navy IRL). Again, not sponsored but the quality of the quilt (which has been through the wash three times already) is really lovely and it would be great in an adult’s room too. The two other navy shams were from our linen closet. The rainbow pillow was from our previous nursery, the yellow one came with the Monte rocker and the teddy bear was a gift.

DESK

We found this little wooden desk in the garage and it was made by the original owner of the house! I brought it back to life with a coat of butcher’s block wax and I think it’s perfect for a child’s room! It serves the dual purpose of being a bedside table as well.  The lamp was either a garage or Goodwill find that’s been in the nursery all along. I covered the shade for Bea Bea’s nursery (which, sorry, I never got good photos of!) in the wide yellow stripe. The ABC print was also in her nursery and I updated it with a little washi tape.  I also updated the chair. You might remember it from my Instastories a while back. I found a set of four and at the time we were considering furnishing the old house as an Air BnB rental. These were going to be the dining room chairs.  Now that we’re set to close on that house, I had them here for a project. I spray painted it a bright yellow, which took about 4-5 coats to get in all of the nooks and cranies. I’m glad I did though! It’s a nice pop next to the wooden desk. The map print trashcan is a second hand vintage find from years ago.

THE ROCKER

Babies love being rocked to sleep and I have nursed both of my kids hundreds of times in this rocking chair. I bought it before I had a million other things to spend money on, and truth be told, it’s pricey. I justified it by thinking it would be a nice addition to any room in the house eventually and I think that’s still true. It’s on sale at Land of Nod if you’re so inclined to check it out.  I designed and made the rainbow quilt and the yellow and white blanket was a gift to my mom when she was pregnant with me. The little fox was also a gift (side note! I saw our little fox again this morning! I have such a huge crush on him!!!!)

CURTAINS

We’ve got mega wide (128″) windows, so it took four panels to span across. We bought navy and white striped blackout curtains (also Pillowfort from Target). The curtain rod was repurposed from our living room and I painted it the same dark blue as the back wall - it practically disappears! 

TOYS

You don’t see a lot of toys here… because they’ve all been in storage for a couple of months. It’s amazing how little kids need and how much they can imagine on their own. In addition to “my giraffey friend” (baby shower gift), the fire truck (from Nana, found at a garage sale) and some wooden stacking and bead toys (similar), we have blocks and trains in the family room. Eventually we’ll rotate in some of his old toys, but less is more with that one for us.

BOOKCASE

The bookcase was made by my dad and Adam before Felix was born. It’s filled with his books and stuffed animals that we’ve received as gifts. Honestly it’s usually a sort of mass collection of books and not well organized, so I just took everything out, stacked books into rainbow colors and placed them back in that way. I’m calling it clean/semi-styled. I promise you it will not look like this a week from now, but hey! if he’s grabbing books and “reading” them I’m not complaining!

The vintage pull down school map is something I’ve wanted in a kid’s room for a long time and I had seen it at an antique store a while back. After we painted the walls, I kept thinking about the map and luckily it was still available!! One thing I’ve realized is that if you see a second hand piece you love, get it then and there! Etsy also has some of these beauties if you don’t want to treasure hunt forever to find one! The colors on ours happen to match perfectly and it was a complete accident! I originally had it over the dresser/changing table, but both kids (especially Bea) played with it and while it’s not an old antique, it’s too nice to potential get poop on. Ha! It also matches the width of the book shelf better, and I love how it just pops off the wall!

DECORATIONS

I haven’t done much in the way of putting stuff on the walls besides the map and the kitty prints over the bed. Those are also from Felix’s nursery. I used bright poster board and cat treats to get these shots of our Raymond and Gizmo and are printed on canvas. We also kept the rainbow balloon Adam and I bought on our last solo vacation before kids and we still love it! 

I’m so in love with this room! It’s absolutely possible to make an update incorporating sentimental nursery items with practical pieces that will grow into boyhood. Thanks to my parents helping us out, I only bought paint, the vintage map and the new headboard specifically for this space! Everything else was brought along from the nursery or repurposed from elsewhere in the house!

GET THE LOOK

Our Home | Felix’s Nursery Update

It’s hard to believe that two years ago I was putting the finishing touches on Baby Quirk’s nursery! You might remember we waited to find out if we would have a little girl or little boy for the birthday, so I initially chose to decorate the room in neutral gray and whites with pops of rainbow colors. 

Felix will turn two this summer and has his own favorite things - colors, animals, books and toys. Keeping that in mind, I decided to update some of the decorative elements in his space to reflect his personality. The major stuff - like the furniture, window treatments and paint all remain the same.

Here’s what we’ve updated!!

My new favorite wall is over his changing table. We had a little scare not long ago when Felix was being bouncy and a picture frame shattered. Everyone was fine but I decided no more glass! Instead I taped up a few prints, spray painted his FQ initials and made some animal banners using felt. Pandas, owls and bees seem to be his favorites!  He also likes saying “heart! heart! home!” and pointing to the map of Indiana. On my actual changing table I either use two pillow cases or a crib sheet that’s wrapped around it. Next to that we have a large wicker basket for all of Felix’s cloth diapers.

Also in this space - we made an improvement on our diaper situation, thanks to today’s post sponsors Munchkin, and the STEP Diaper Pail they sent us to review for this post. We cloth diaper Felix during the day, but use heavy absorbency overnight disposables at night. Because I didn’t initially plan on plastic diapers, I never registered for or bought a diaper pail and just used a small step/lid bin we already had instead. Welp - to put it gently- if you miss a day of taking out the trash, your trash can will remind you. Now that portion of the room is smelling fresh (it has a baking soda disc in the lid that really helps!), looks sleek and the perfect height for dropping in diapers (because yes, I’ve tried to toss a dirty into the trash while holding a wiggly baby, missed and regretted it!)

Over the crib I did a quick project and made pinwheels! I didn’t want to eliminate the cute rainbow pieces in his room (like his quilt or balloon) but wanted to push more towards blues and yellows. I think this is a nice way to mix them in. One morning I came into his room and he was just laying in his crib, chattering to himself and pointing at different ones.   

I don’t know if I’ve ever posted a photo of this portion of the room - opposite the window and bookshelf. I changed out the paper behind the mounted shelves with left overs from the pinwheels. Inside are little cards, photos and momentos that mama can’t bare to pack away! As you can see we keep one trash bin for dry/non-smelly things up high (a DIY from years ago!). His lamp is an old vintage number I found stashed away in the basement with a new shade. Adam gave me the chevron rainbow switch plate cover years ago, which he found on etsy.

I couldn’t get a good shot of the new window bunting (it’s hard to get good photos of a window!), but I’ll post a mediocre one anyways! I cut out a LOT of felt circles and just ran them through my sewing machine to create a long string of them. Super easy and quick!

Many thanks to today’s post sponsors, Munchkin and the STEP Diaper Pail for thinking of our family for this project, inspiring me to finally update our son’s room and for the STEP diaper pail! Thank you for supporting the brands that make What I Wore possible!