I’m sharing photos of my sons’ bedroom today! The room didn’t come together right away and it’s taken lots of adjustments to get to where I finally felt it was “finished.” When we bought our first home in San Francisco and moved in last Fall we set up the old bedroom furniture in their new room but a lot of things just didn’t fit right. It has taken almost 6 months to slowly resolve each problem until I was happy with it. When I’m decorating a space I really try to think about how functional everything is, I’ll share that whole process below. Come take a peek!

A few general details: We had the front half of the house painted before we moved in and that included the boys’ room. I had to choose the paint colors fairly quickly and for the boys’ room I chose Valspar’s Swiss Coffee. Eggshell walls and Semigloss Trim. It was a nice clean slate to start from. I knew right away I wanted a big wall map so I ordered this one off Amazon. It comes with wall paper paste and took an afternoon to hang (it’s not complicated but it is tedious.) The rug we bought from West Elm. The light fixture is the Nelson Ball Pendant. There is a lot going on in the room so I wanted the light to be subtle and I think it works.

The bunk beds are the Ikea Mydal painted Valspar’s Classic red, the striped bedding is from Pottery Barn Kids. When choosing bunkbeds I really liked the Room and Board Fort Bunk Bed and almost purchased it. But we noticed Ikea had an almost identical wooden version for 1/10th the price. Paul convinced me to try out the Ikea version first and if we changed our minds we could sell it and and upgrade. I’m really glad we did because we’ve been really happy with the Ikea version. We painted the bunkbed with two coats of red paint and one coat of polyurethane. (We went into the stores and tested both and the R+B one is more sturdy and better built.)

The toy shelf is also from Ikea. It’s really tall and has clean lines and everyone seems surprised it’s from Ikea. It’s become sort of a joke because several of our friends have bought it since they saw it at our house. It’s definitely a new Ikea favorite. I like keeping the toys stored low to the ground in clear plastic bins and and the less-used toys higher up. We also store board games and some toys in the closet. (I did a whole giant post on our toy collection right here, if you’re interested.) The orange sailboat is actually a kite (which we use!) but it also looks nice next to our vintage globe collection. The seahorse and dragonflies we got in France from Petit Pan.

The table is from Serena and Lily and the Panton Chairs I bought here. I wanted a way to display the some of the boys’ collections. Their Schleich animal collection, their stick collection, rock collection, lego guys collection etc. So we put up the Algot shelving system from Ikea. The mobile we bought when Moses was born, I was happy to finally have a place to hang it after putting it in storage for a few years.

Here are some of the nitty gritty details of how the room came together:

The first problem we encountered was the old bedroom had several toy shelves we attached to the wall. But the new space had tall moulding that wasn’t conducive to wall shelving so we needed to figure out a new toy storage system. We ended up going with this metal bookshelf from Ikea that has been perfect.

The second problem was the bed conundrum. The boys had a great set of toddler beds in the old place but Moses’ toes were getting close to the end of the toddler bed so I bought some vintage twin beds off Craigslist. When we set them up we realized they took up way too much room and we promptly had to disassemble and put them in storage. It’s funny because in my mind we were moving from a tiny 500 square foot apartment to a new giant house with room to spare. I quickly realized I still had space limitations to deal with. We put the toddler beds back in until I could figure out what we wanted to do. I really didn’t want to do bunk beds but after weighing all our options we ended up trying it. We’ve had them a few months so far and like them. My only complaint is it is a full body workout to make the beds!

The last big problem was the wall opposite of the bed. We had a small vintage wardrobe on the other wall where we kept some games and costumes. I finally was honest with myself that even though I loved it, we weren’t using it very much and it was taking up a lot of space. We replaced it with this children’s play table from Serena and Lily and bought some Panton Junior chairs to go with it. The kids use it for homework and art projects everyday. My friend Erik had told me about this Algot shelving system from Ikea that is really nice and he uses in his shop. We installed it above the play table to hold all their toys.

I’m so happy how it all came together. The boys love their room and play in it everyday. I love how easy it is to clean and organize (everything has a place) and the space is utilized so much better now! I tried to source everything but if I missed something I’ll answer the questions in the comments.

Sources: World Map Wallpaper from Amazon |  Bunk Beds Mydal from Ikea (painted red) | Complete Toy Sources right here | Striped Bedding from Pottery Barn Kids | Light Fixture Nelson Ball Pendant | Tall Bookshelf from Ikea | Honeycomb Rug from West Elm | Panton Junior Chairs from Amazon | Mobile from Schmitt Design | Seahorse and Drangonflies from Petit Pan | Small Wall shelves Algot System from Ikea | Kite from Haptic Lab | Toy Basket from the Thrift Store | Lemon Pillow from Jonathan Adler | Wooden Red Ball Rocker Vintage Creative Playthings from Ebay |