etc.

Toddler and Tween Shared Bedroom

Yesterday I shared with you the dilemma with my girl’s shared bedroom.  After photographing it today, I am seeing more of the problems that I want to address. You can see that it isn’t a huge space by any means, but we’ve got a lot packed in this room.   
Here’s what furniture we have in the room:
full sized antique metal bed
white Jenny Lind crib
desk and stool
2 dressers (one a flea market fix and the other a Target find)
bedside table
The walls are looking especially bare over the bed and desk.  I love the two horse and little girl prints that are over Denali’s bed.  They are sentimental to me.  These sweet prints hung in the room of my Grandparent’s house that I used to sleep in as a child.  A few years ago, my mom gave them to me and I reframed them in simple white frames.  But, I think that their scale is a little off for the size of this long wall.  I think when they are grouped with the 3 prints from The Land of Nod I picked out, they’ll all come together as one larger piece.  Or maybe they would look better together over Denali’s larger dresser.  I’ll be playing around with this.   
Over Olivia’s crib I have a fun metal bicycle that goes with her quilt.  I want to keep that there, but I think I’ll make something new for the bike basket, I might be tired of the tissue paper flowers.  And the vintage needle point and print over Olivia’s dresser with also stay. 
Overall, I want the room to grow up a bit.  It’s looking a little nurseryish through the camera lens.  I think a few modern pieces of art, a sleek modern chair for Denali’s desk, some metallic gold touches here and there (especially on Denali’s bed) and maybe a change in lamps should help.  

What do you think? Am I on the right track?  Can you see how difficult it is for me to make the space fun and age appropriate for both a toddler and a tween?

6 thoughts on “Toddler and Tween Shared Bedroom”

    1. Jeran Post author

      Good ideas but, Olivia is not ready for a bunk bed. And this room doubles as our guest room (mostly grandparents), so we need to keep the full sized bed for now. Eventually they can share the big bed.

    1. Jeran Post author

      Oh no, all the furniture is staying as it is. I'm just looking more on the decorating side of things. When the crib can go, then I'll have a lot of space to work with.

  3. Samantha

    When I was eleven I shared a room with my three year old sister and then when I was 17 I shared a room with my seven year old sister. Trying to find a middle ground is tricky, especially when you get kids in different age groups. The first time around my mom did a sky theme around the room and called it a day, as we grew up the room changed and brightened up– actually, now that I think about it decorating wasn't the issue, getting along was. The second time around though… it was a lot harder because the age difference was so big. I was starting college and she was still wetting the bed. Yay for small old houses, right? Ultimately, the age difference just became too much and the five of us kids had to play musical rooms.

    The thing that helped the most really was bunk beds. I took the bottom bunk and could just survive down there away from the magazine posters and stuffed animals. Keeping the walls neutral-ish helped (I want to say they were lavender). If I could do it again, de-cluttering my sister's stuff and having a better organization technique for school stuff would have been great. Why not throw some shelves up on the wall? Or curtains on the windows? It looks like there's blinds there but why not a valance or something to draw in a darker color? Or for a wall decoration what about something done up in chalkboard paint? It'd be fun and functional, but also give a pop of… color for lack of a better word. Although, I've even seen chalkboard paint in colors that aren't black so that's something.

Comments are closed.