The Rainbow Room

My happiest room of the house - my rainbow room! My favourite thing is to come into this room and see my daughter happily playing away. What a perfect sight!

We had wanted to turn my daughters’ room from her old nursery (below) into her dream bedroom for a while, so when moved her into her big girls’ bed and the wallpaper started to peel off the wall (courtesy of her little brother!) we knew it was time for a change. My daughter asked for rainbows, and she got RAINBOWS!!

I had a few ideas before we started ripping off the rest of the paper. I wanted to use a mix of wallpaper and paint. I wanted to make the room light, bright and colourful in keeping with the rest of our home. I also wanted something that was age appropriate but could grow with her in time, and something fun, that she would enjoy playing in. So off I went pinning images, mostly from Instagram and Pinterest.

I first came across some rainbow wallpaper from @eleanorbowmer and fell in love with it straight away. I loved how that it would allow me to be able to introduce lots of colour into the room as well as matching well with our existing nursery furniture. The storage in my daughter’s room worked really so there was no need to replace it, plus I am a great believer that good storage is key to any room, in particular when it comes to kids clothes and general clutter (I mean toys!)

The rainbow wallpaper became the basis for the room design. I decided to do one wall in the paper as it makes quite the statement, and balance it with something more neutral on the other walls. I chose to do wall scalloping that I’d spotted on Instagram as I felt it would work well with the shape of a rainbow. After ordering a few paints samples I landed on Confetti by Little Greene which is a lovely pretty pink. The scalloping was pretty easy to do. I drew a line the height I wanted around the room then made myself a cardboard template using a large dinner plate. I then placed the cardboard template on the line and drew around it to create semi circles across the room. The painting is the difficult part as you need a very steady hand to paint around it, and I can’t take any credit for that in this room!

Once the room was papered and painted, I could then get on with my favourite part, the decor (otherwise known as faffing!) I had managed to get some great kids decor over the years since the kids were babies so to keep the costs down I wanted to incorporate this as much as possible into the new room. Some of my absolute favourite purchases over the years have been the ‘Girls and Boys Rule’ cushions from @thecrashers and the @retrokids heart neon light we now have on my daughter’s bedroom wall. She can turn it on and off herself so it’s perfect! I also added an upcycled Ikea kids table and chairs that I had painted a couple of years back, and I covered it in dalmatian vinyl print to match it in with wallpaper. Finally, I added my old 1980’s dolls house that I had recently come across in my mum and dads’ loft. It brings back lots of memories for me and I find it wonderful that my daughter is now able to get as much pleasure out of it as I did all those years ago.

I bought a few bits as final touches for the room, some new shelves from Rose in April on sale to display some of the things we had collected over time. A few new prints for the wall to make sure the rainbow colours carried across the room to keep it all as cohesive as possible. I found a fab dotty monochrome rug from Asda which was a bargain, and glitter unicorn lamp from Dunhelm. When I write that all down I appreciate it sounds a bit too much but for some reason it all just came together…. phew!

So the rainbow room really is a mix of old and new, and just shows that you don’t always have to start afresh when you makeover a room. I found going for a scheme that could incorporate the things we already had (and loved!) really kept the costs down. Keeping the scheme open to different colours helps, so you can easily add things to the room as time goes by. I’m often adding to it and moving stuff around. My daughter recently got a disco ball for her birthday and this has fit perfectly into the room. As always, I would recommend thinking about storage as its key to keeping the room as together (as possible with a toddler)! But most of all my advice is to keep it fun as these younger years just fly by, so when else are you going to get to enjoy rainbows, unicorns and discoballs?!

I am so pleased how it all turned out. My daughter walked in and couldn’t stop touching the wall to see if it was real or not...it was absolutely priceless!

Thanks for reading

Elise x