A Pretty & Practical Girl’s Bedroom Makeover

Floral Wallpaper, lots of soft color, and plenty of storage make this feminine bedroom both beautiful and functional.

Molly’s room is finished, and I freaking LOVE how it turned out.

My personal style has never been particularly feminine, and as the mother of four boys, I’ve also never decorated a girl’s bedroom. Turns out I had a lot of pent-up pink and floral energy just waiting to be let loose. I got to play with rose-colored walls, colorful wallpaper, flower-shaped lights, and all kinds of things I would never normally choose. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, and I am super happy with the end result.

Another reason I love this room so much is that it’s FINISHED finished. My rooms have a tendency to stay works in progress forever…I’m always looking for the perfect vintage piece or thinking of one more thing I could change. But not this one. I’m calling it done, closing the door, and giving it back to my stepdaughter as her private space. And that feels really good.

Here’s how it all came together.

The Challenge

The first challenge is the room itself, which has some unique features.

It’s part of the addition we built when my husband and I blended our families, and her room used to be part of the sunken one-car garage. The bed nook came into existence because we needed a weekend/holiday sleeping space for a college kid, and the only way we could make that work was to drop the ceiling over part of Molly’s room and build a tiny room above it, which has a ladder entrance from the hallway.

It works great, but it makes Molly’s room kinda funky. Which, honestly, I think is great. It’s something different and unique and interesting…but it also meant I had to figure out how to make that weirdness in the middle of the room look cool and intentional instead of like weirdness in the middle of the room.

The next things aren’t so much challenges as simple requests. The first was to move the bed out of the nook area to get better airflow. Easy. The second request was for more storage space for clothes and shoes, which nobody can blame her for. A girl needs options. It’s less easy than moving the bed location though, because Molly’s room is small and it doesn’t have a closet. She’s been using a wardrobe for storage, and it works fine, but it’s just not that much space.

So: weird layout, no closet, not enough storage, and a bed that needed the leave its comfort zone.

The Design

Style-wise, Molly made this part pretty easy. She likes things very light and feminine – lots of white, pink, and florals – and she’s not big on busyness, too many patterns, or tons of color. The goal was to give her that, but stretch her a little, restrain myself a little, and pull together a room that felt calming, interesting, feminine, and, most importantly, functional.

We started off with picking the most colorful and pattern-heavy thing in the room – the wallpaper – and used that as a jumping-off point for the rest of the room. The mission was to keep the room mostly light and white, then pull pink, dusty blue, and green from the wallpaper and spread those around the room.

I wrote a full blog post about the plan and design, you can read it here if you want all the deets.

The Walls

I knew I wanted paint, paneling, and wallpaper in this room, but I wasn’t totally sure where each one should go. The bed nook has a low ceiling and sticks out into the room, so it already felt like this big block forcing its way into the middle of the space. Sometimes the best thing to do with a weird part of a room is to try to make it disappear. And sometimes the best thing to do is to make it louder and turn it into a feature.

I chose to make it louder.

We painted the whole section pink…SW Resounding Rose to be exact. And by “we,” I mean the painter my husband hired.

I’m a DIY girl through and through, but I’ve been dealing with a stubborn and VERY annoying case of tennis elbow, and my physical therapist specifically told me NOT to paint because it would make my elbow worse. I was telling my husband this, and before I could even finish stubbornly saying, “I’ll just paint it with my left hand,” he was on the phone hiring someone.

And you know what? It was awesome. And SO fast. And now I’m a princess and may never paint again, haha. But seriously.

My husband installed vertical shiplap paneling on the other walls, which the painter painted white. It’s subtle, but it adds some texture and interest and breaks up what otherwise would have been a heck of a lot of floral wallpaper.

Molly picked the floral pattern from Love vs. Design, and then we customized the colors until we had exactly what we wanted. It turned out great…it adds so much personality without making the room feel too dark or busy, which was exactly what we wanted.

I’ve already written a whole post about the wallpaper…why I chose it, what it was like to install (this part I actually did do myself), and all my thoughts after testing a ridiculous amount of removable wallpaper. You can read all of that here.

The “No Closet” Solution

As I said, Molly’s room doesn’t have a closet, so she uses a wardrobe instead. When she said she wanted more storage space, I immediately thought, “bigger wardrobe.” So that’s what I did. I bought a bigger wardrobe (this one) from IKEA.

Then a reader (thank you, Julie!) suggested something SO much better: curtains.

She suggested hanging curtains from the ceiling in the nook and turn the whole back section into a closet. I LOVED that idea. So I changed course, returned the unassembled wardrobe (yay procrastination!), and started figuring out the best way to hang curtains from the ceiling.

In my searches I kept coming across a company that sells ceiling tacks and custom curtains called TwoPages. Then I remembered that they had emailed me before, asking if we could work together. So I dug up the email, explained my project, and asked if they still wanted to collaborate (which is fancy speak for you give me free curtains, and I use and promote them). And they did want to collaborate. Love it when things work out like that.

My goal with the pink section of the room was to be loud in the space, but not busy. I wanted the closet curtains to disappear into the wall, not stand out as another pattern or color. Luckily, TwoPages had a color that was almost identical to the pink paint. For the window, I chose a lighter pink in the same fabric because I wanted the curtains to coordinate without matching.

And LOOK.

This whole curtain closet situation might be my favorite decision in the room, because it solved three problems at once.

First, it gives her way more storage than a wardrobe would have. Second, it looks SO GOOD. It keeps everything simple and clean and adds some softness. Lastly, the AC closet is back there, which we need to be able to open to change the filter. Not only do the curtains cover the whole ugly area, but the rolling rack makes it extremely easy to access the door. We added a slim five-drawer dresser to the other side, and the whole thing just works so well.

Also, genuinely, the TwoPages curtains are super nice. They’re custom-sized, the fabric is thick with a beautiful texture, and the hardware is great quality. The pleats are pre-sewn (so they always look perfect), the hardware is hidden, and they hang and glide so smoothly. They’re obviously a splurge, and I probably wouldn’t have chosen them for a kid’s room without the collaboration. But now that they’re here, I want them in my living and dining rooms. They just don’t compare to less expensive curtains and hardware I have everywhere else. They’re like, NICE nice.

TwoPages also gave me a code to share, so you can use code WILDFIREINTERIORS to get 20% off.

The Details

Once the big pieces were in place, this is where it got fun.

I used the wallpaper as the color palette for the rest of the room, pulling out the dusty blue, green, and pink and repeating those colors in different places. Then there’s plenty of white and natural wood mixed in to keep it from feeling like a color explosion.

At the entrance to the room I added a wooden shoe cabinet, which gave Molly much-needed shoe storage and gave me a pretty surface for art and a few decorative items. Functional and pretty…my favorite combo.

(All items are linked at the bottom of this post, so if you see something you like, that’s where you will find it.)

Then there’s the new bed area –

I found the glass flower pendant lights and immediately knew I wanted to use them here. They were surprisingly cheap, and they’re plug-in so we didn’t have to add any electrical. They’re exactly the kind of thing I would never get to use anywhere else in my house and I freaking love them.

The art above the bed was a last-minute addition. I actually wasn’t planning to put anything above the bed, but once everything was together it just felt like it needed something. Turns out, “something” is a wide-eyed swimming cat.

I wanted art that looked like it belonged in the room but didn’t take itself too seriously. Molly loves cats, so when I found this print on Etsy, it was perfect. It’s pretty and ridiculous at the same time, and the colors work perfectly in the room.

Then, back in the old bed nook/new closet area, we kept Molly’s existing vanity and added a full-length mirror. I really love how this part of the room turned out because it actually feels like a little dressing area now instead of a random nook we were trying to figure out what to do with.

The Finished Room

Alright, enough yapping. Here’s a bunch more photos.

I genuinely don’t think there’s anything I would change about this room. It feels like Molly, it works so much better for her, and all the weird little things about the space that made it challenging in the beginning ended up being some of my favorite parts.

I’ve linked everything I can from the room below, but if I missed something or you have any questions, let me know in the comments.

Sources

Walls & Floors

• Paint Colors – Resounding Rose and Pure White from Sherwin Williams
• Paneling
• Wallpaper
• Jute rug
• Light pink rug

Furniture

• Bed frame w/ headboard
• Green side table w/ plugs
• Wooden shoe cabinet
• Gold arch floor mirror
• White slim 5-drawer dresser
• Vanity
• Pink boucle stool (similar)
• Three-tier side table (spray painted with this color)

Bedding

• Dusty blue comforter
• White sheets
• Lumbar pillow (and the insert)
• Faux fur body pillow cover
• Mattress

Curtains

• Window curtains (color is pink)
• Curtain rod & rings
• Closet curtains (color is coral)
• Ceiling track

Lighting

• Glass flower pendant lights
• Wall mount bracket for pendant lights
• 44-inch ceiling fan

Art

• Monet cat art print
• “California Seascape” framed painting
• Sleeping cat framed art
• “Yellow Marigold” art print (and the frame)
• “New Roots” art print (and the frame)
• “Cow Parsley” art print

Decor & Accessories

• Rattan basket
• Rattan planter
• Framed corkboard
• Pig pushpins
• Gold planter (similar)
• Small alarm clock
• Reed diffuser

Electronics & Misc

• TV
• Cord hider
• Phone charger
• Paintable outlet cover