A Playful and Bright Playroom Introduction

About six months ago we started a new client (progress board above), and over time we are designing their very beautiful Los Feliz home, prioritizing the rooms that the felt the most urgent first. At the time we started this project she was pregnant with their second daughter, the first one being a toddler so they needed a playroom, a guest room and a big girl room for their toddler ideally before the baby was born. First up is the playroom. She is small, but man she turned out to be so cute.

The playroom was originally a home office:

It’s fairly small and was more of a storage room than a space either of them sat to be productive. It’s right off the kitchen so it’s kinda a perfect place to put an adorable little playroom and to stash those bigger ride-on toys that clutter up the nearby living room but still need to be accessed.

Stylistically they wanted a place that was bright, poppy, modern, happy, and whimsical. Functionally it needed a sitting area (for cuddling/reading), book/toy storage, and an art/craft table. With that in mind we got to designing.

They had a sofa in another room that was in great shape but that needed a reupholstery job, and they had already purchased the gray bins, but everything else was up for grabs and could be moved or changed. We started playing by pulling together some design boards.

After playing around with different color combos and arrangements we ultimately loved this plan the most (below) and pitched it to the client. We typically bring photos of other options and play around with them if they react negatively or positively to something. But this was our favorite:

They liked it a lot but were a bit scared of the pink wall … and yet they could handle a pink sofa. You don’t have to ask us to upholster a sofa in blush pink twice. So we updated it slightly and here is the updated design plan:

We kept most of what was originally in the plan but added this soft minty green color and paired it with this fun metallic blue wallpaper from Juju Papers for the small bathroom that was connected to the room.  We also swapped out a few items to better reflect the new color scheme overall.

We got busy painting (Benjamin Moore Green Cast), wallpapering and arranging for the sofa to be redone:

The new rug and wallpaper looked just wonderful together.

We loved the idea of the wallpaper in here, but having it in the bathroom made that small room really special, too.

Don’t worry – the mirror and hand towel were switched out (but no, we didn’t really address the double mirror situation. So tricky.

We finished it up and are ready to post (but probably pitching it to another publication first) so here is a sneak peek of how it is looking from when we shot it last week.

Ginny and Mel were the designers on this project, with me popping in to say ‘Yes! Good job! Keep it up! Move that over there! Not so far! Make it pinker! every week or so, and we all really like the way it turned out and how we made that little storage office into a fun useful space for them and their growing family.

Stay tuned for the the full reveal, and let us know if you have any questions below. xx

Update: the paint color is Benjamin Moore Green Cast, The rug is from Land of Nod, the sofa is vintage upholstered in a pink linen, pouf is from Lulu and Georgia, bins from Land of Nod, and pillows from Target.

***Sneak Peek photo by Tessa Neustadt