Oct 25

Oct 25 Creating Alfie's Big Boy Bedroom

Home Inspiration, Brand Collaboration, DIY

When my son Alfie announced he wanted a "big boy" bedroom, I was filled with a sense of dread, since not only was his old bedroom, my absolute favourite room (the Ferm Living Wallpaper was one I had loved for years before getting the chance to use it), but he's quite an exacting client and I knew it would take some time to do. However, we decided that half term should be the time we tackled his room and so for a few weekends in a row, we looked over room inspiration and chose how his room should look, making it into a fun project we could do together.

He had quite a strong feeling about his room theme, wanting it to be based on a map mural, with a travel twist and when we stumbled across the model hot air balloons, which I picked up from Pavilion Broadway, our ideas started to come together. You can see the mood board we created below.

The mural which you can see above and in the next few shots, was chosen from Rebel Walls. We chose the School Atlas World Map as it was lovely and colourful and I felt that it was a wall that he could grow up with, most likely knowing the names of the most obscure countries that just happened to be right next to his head. At bed time, once stories are read, we often sit with the kids and talk about a country of their choosing, but it is hard to visualise where this country sits in the world. Now, we no longer have that problem, we have the whole world right next to the bed. You can find the map mural here

A sheepskin sits on the floor next to his bed.

Bedding came next and we'd already found a blanket Alfie loved from Loaf Home, found on Pinterest, but when we went onto the website we discovered these amazing mountain cushions which also fit right into the travel/world theme.

The Owl cushion we kept from his previous room which is from Ferm Living.

The Lego storage boxes have been an amazing find, looking not only super cool, but also very practical for all the little bits of Lego that end up strewn across the floor during any play session. You can source them from a number of places, John Lewis being the place that I got mine.

The Car blanket and the Guitar Cushion with Cars on it, were from his original room, sourced from Ferm Living here.

Model Hot Air Balloons from Pavilion Broadway. We have three sizes in this room, large in blue, medium in red and small in blue. They do an extra-large one if anyone is looking to make a real statement, but I felt that given the sloping ceiling, which we have to contend with, these sizes were just right, although admittedly, I did order twice because I just couldn't "visualise" the sizes in the room.

The Mountain Rescue Blanket is from Loaf. It is a beautiful vibrant red trimmed with grey and white. It is also completely reversible if you want more muted colours, being mostly grey and white with a hint of red.

When it came to wall colour, Alfie knew exactly what he wanted; white walls at the top and grey at the bottom, and he added a red stripe to match his blanket and the red in the mural map.

I chose Farrow and Ball Paint in "All White" and "Manor House Grey", which you can see to the right in the picture above and in the picture below.

Alfie also wanted vinyl records on his walls and I picked up 6 on eBay for £2.28.

Many of the items in the shot above were already in Alfie's room, but we added more detail with vintage world and tube maps which I also sourced from eBay. The bunting you can see over the blackboard was also from Loaf.

The blackboard was painted using blackboard paint, available at most hardware stores and then we created a surround our of wood, to make it look as though it is actually a blackboard pinned to the wall.