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Our sassy little preschooler has the most colourful room in the house!

And so she should; colour is so important for a child’s development. Bright colours stimulate their creativity, improve their mood, enhance their sense of playfulness, and just generally make a space feel like a happy place to be.

It definitely helps if your parents love colour too!

Take a tour through our currently 4-and-a-half year-old daughter’s colourful bedroom.

Half-painted walls

Instead of committing to floor-to-ceiling colour, we decided to paint the bottom half of her walls and leave the top half white.

We went with a bold purple; Taubmans Grape Juice 🍇

I feel like purple is an underutilised colour in interior design. We could’ve easily gone with a predictable pink or youthful yellow, but why not let purple have its moment?

Painting just the lower half of the walls works well in this room since a lot of the furniture is lower and kid sized.

Once we put painters tape down, we painted over the seam with our existing white paint (Taubmans Crisp White) before we went in with the purple. That way, when we pulled up the tape, there was no bleed.

🎬 WATCH: How to paint a clean line

I was tempted to do a scalloped line instead of just a straight line, but at the time I thought scalloped walls were done to death. But looking at the room now I still kinda want the scallops! Thinking aloud: If I painted scallops now, would the purple blend nicely or would you see a bit of a line? 🤔

Low Double Bed

We transitioned K into her big girl bed when she was 2 👶

She was still little though, so we sourced a Montessori style floor bed so she could be more independent… and also not have a big fall if she fell out!

We chose a low white and timber double bed base which doesn’t have legs, which means there’s no space for monsters to hide under the bed 👹

A friend of mine recommended we get a double bed – that way we could hop in with her if she was ever sick or needed cuddles.

The double bed was honestly such a great recommendation; we snuggle up in bed with her every night when we read her bedtime stories. If she ever has a sleepover, it’ll come in handy too!

Originally her bed was below the window, but when we rearranged her room we decided to find a headboard to make the room feel cosier. Beds just look better with something behind them, right?

I ended up finding a vintage velvet headboard on Facebook Marketplace which I hustled down to $50. It was a lovely almost olive green, which isn’t repeated elsewhere in the room but I was going for colourful and eclectic anyway… and I really loved it.

I really believe that if you love something but you’re not sure if it will “go”, just buy it and you’ll find a way to make it work!

Above her bed is this cute Staffordshire Dogs canvas from Fy! (you can use our code MISMATCHEDHOME at checkout for 20% off 😉)

She’s got a good rotation of bedding in lots of colours, but right now it’s Summer, so she doesn’t need a big quilt. I recently bought her this blue bedspread on sale from Adairs to tie in the colours of the print and add a little bit more white to the space.

The Miffy cushion and Gingham Heart cushion are both from Target, which I’ve discovered is so good for kids decor and clothes! The lilac flower patterned pillowcases and yellow floral bedsheets are from Target too.

Of course, her beloved Hello Kitty is nestled in the middle 💜

Blinds & Curtains

K has a big window in her room which overlooks our alfresco area, so she gets a good amount of sunlight in here.

We’re definitely big on window furnishings in this household and really appreciate the difference they can make to a room. Almost every window has been given the golden trio of trim, blinds and curtains.

We had very builder-basic windows before, so Martin installed timber trim around the outside and inside edges of the window, which we painted white to match the skirting. This detail would probably go unnoticed to most, but it makes such a big difference to me!

All our bedrooms have external shutters; we live in Western Australia and the summers are extremely hot, so these help keep the rooms cool. They also help you sleep longer since they totally blockout the light, so having shutters was so handy when she was in a crib! We have them in our room and I literally sleep like a baby 👶

Our shutters are manual, so Martin had to build the trim around the lever. Luckily the curtains cover this part so you never see it.

Like the rest of the house, we installed white timber venetian blinds from Blinds Online in this bedroom. White blinds reflect the most amount of light and just look clean and crisp against the mostly white trim in our house.

When it’s not too hot, we like to keep the shutters rolled up. Having venetian blinds means we can still control how much light to let in. Plus, I really enjoy the horizontal shadows the blinds create when the sun hits them.

We went with light filtering curtains in this room; we wanted a bit more coverage than sheer but didn’t need them to be blockout. Light filtering was just right!

I decided to go with yellow curtains, since yellow is purple’s complementary colour. Yellow and purple are directly opposite eachother on the colour wheel; because of their contrast, they tend to always look nice together.

Most of our curtains are also from Blinds Online, who stock a huge range of William Morris patterns. We chose the classic William Morris Marigold pattern in the colourway Mimosa 💛

We went with S-fold curtains so they would always hang perfectly wavy, and they do! S-fold curtains typically come with a white track and little hooks sewn into the curtains. It was pretty simple to install and I love how the windows look now. I just hope Kaia never gets the urge to draw on them like she has in our living room! 😢

🎬 WATCH: Blinds & Curtains Install

Flooring & Rug

When we moved into this house, all the bedrooms had dirty beige carpet while the living area had beautiful jarrah floors.

We quickly ripped out the carpet in here, but to save money we went with laminate floors.

I wanted this room to be cool-toned as opposed to warm like the jarrah, so we chose oak-look flooring for all of our bedrooms (the master bedroom has real oak).

Of course, the room needed a rug!

We wanted something soft and cosy but also washable. We chose the washable Beatrice rug from Miss Amara, which is a peachy pink colour with a pretty transitional pattern.

This is the softest rug in the house! It also has a nice grippy backing so it doesn’t need an underlay. We haven’t had any spills yet, but when we do, she’ll be fine.

🎬 WATCH: Beatrice Rug

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; rugs make the room.

If you’re not sure if your bedroom needs a rug, let me help you: it does.

Here’s her room with and without a rug. The rug just grounds the space and makes the bed look even more inviting.

It’s also much nicer to get out of bed and feel something soft on your feet!

Bookshelves & Gallery Wall

We’re known to love a good gallery wall, so we figured K needed a big ol’ gallery wall of her own.

Like our living room, her gallery wall is anchored by bookshelves below it, so the stuff on the shelves become part of the wall too.

Before we rearranged this room, the gallery wall looked a little different (see above).

It had a few less frames on it and nothing below it – but we needed somewhere to store her growing collection of bedtime books.

So I bought four of these cheap $29 Kmart display bookshelves. These are great for kids because they can see the front covers as opposed to the spines, making the books more engaging.

The bottom part of the shelf fits two Anko/Kmart storage cubes, so I got four sage and four white boucle. We keep a lot of her bedding, princess costumes and extra books in here, so we’re not short of storage.

Confession time: If I could do this wall over again, I would’ve chosen larger frames from the start. There are a few smaller frames which look great up close, but make less of an impact from afar.

When we added the bookshelves below, I tried to make some improvements to the wall by adding some larger frames.

I added the daisy boucle flower mirror, pink framed bunnies and blue framed unicorn from Adairs, which definitely helped vary the scale of artwork on the wall.

The macrame rainbow, raindrop garland and flower decals are from Kasie’s Room, who have really cute wall decor for little girls.

The Keep Going rollerskate, sunflowers and flower pot prints were from the lovely To The Moon and Back Prints, who is also featured in the mini washi tape gallery wall next to my desk in our playroom.

The handpainted koala was gifted to K by our talented friend Stacey, and the painting below it was found at an opshop.

I also framed one of K’s drawings from when she was 3! I think it’s so cute and looks like a skipping head with arms and legs and two different colour eyes, which she seemed to do a lot at the time!

🎬 WATCH: Colourful Kids Gallery Wall

Both K and I love all the little moments on the wall; it features heaps of her favourite characters like Totoro, Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella, Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse, so it really was designed with her happiness in mind.

I still think there a few too many tiny frames, so when she’s a bit older and she wants to switch things up, we might rethink the wall a bit.

Upcycled Tallboy

Most of the time, we struggle to justify buying storage furniture brand new since there’s so much available on Marketplace.

I also wanted to add a bit more colour to the room, and the best and most cost effective way to do that is to do it yourself.

There still isn’t a lot of colourful furniture on in the shops, but even if there was, a brand new tallboy would’ve cost more than 10x what we ended up spending.

We found this small tallboy on Marketplace which I hustled down to $40. It’s not super solid and the drawers don’t have runners, which is reflected in the price. When K’s bigger she might need something bigger too, but for now, it’s good enough for her size 4 and 5 clothes!

We love the look of two tone furniture so we decided to paint the bulk of it yellow (Taubmans Yarrow) but leave the top and the first drawer raw pine.

The knobs were a darker pine which didn’t really go, so we just painted those white.

🎬 WATCH: Upcycled Two-Tone Tallboy

Above the tallboy we have portraits of a dozen well-dressed animals. We bought these postcards while in Stockholm in 2019, before K was even born.

We didn’t know what to do with them at the time but I think we always knew we’d keep them for our future child’s room 💞

Upcycled Bedside Table

The wall space where her bed is is fairly tight, so we decided to just get one bedside table instead of the typical two.

Since her bed is so low, we needed to find something stumpy! A tough ask 🤔

So we doomscrolled trusty Facebook Marketplace and set out to find something we could amputate!

I ended up finding this grey and black bedside table on Marketplace. It had steel legs that, as far as I could tell, could be screwed off.

I imagined this would be almost the perfect size once we amputated it!

Much to Martin’s dismay, we painted it bright pink (British Paints Pink Orbit) and replaced the existing black drawer pulls with simple little pine knobs.

We bought some chunky round feet from Bunnings which we painted pink too. Once on, they brought the table up to the perfect height to match the bed. I’m obsessed with how cute and stumpy it turned out and I love the colour!

🎬 WATCH: Bedside Table Upcycle

The previous owners left us a roll of blue drawer liners that they intended to use but never did. We stuck them down to the inside of the drawer which just makes it feel much more finished. I need to do this in all my other drawers!

K stores all sorts of little things in her drawers; mostly random hair clips and stickers and lip glosses. She insists on having her water bottle by her bedside, so the chunky low bedside was definitely a worthwhile DIY.

We got the plush flower pot from Kasies Room years ago; it complements the wall colour, the flower sheets and the curtains so well. Plus it doesn’t need water or sunlight!

Of course, she also has a little night light by her bed too 🌟

Lighting

The natural light in here is really good during the day, so whenever we’re home, we try to draw the curtains and open up the shutters.

We popped a simple IKEA TORARED pendant lamp shade and cord set on the ceiling which adds that extra bit of nature to the room. The summers are so hot in Perth though, so we’ll soon be replacing it with a timber-look ceiling fan with light. Not ideal design-wise, but I think it’s a necessity, especially when we want a bit of airflow but don’t need the aircon.

On the other side of her bed is a $20 floor lamp that I found at an opshop (or thrift shop for the non-Australians). It’s a very simple style but what I love about it is that it’s dimmable 💡

Now that she’s four and has developed a little sense of fear, she doesn’t want to sleep in absolute darkness, so we leave it on a very dim light when she goes to sleep. It makes the room cosy at all times too!

A cute room for a cute gal!

I love how happy and bright this room is and I hope K does too!

Kids deserve colour! These might not be the colours I’d decorate the rest of the house with (cos Martin wouldn’t let me) so it’s been fun to experiment with cute, colourful design in here and in her playroom.

🎬 WATCH: Four year old’s bedroom

So let me know what you think of her room! 💜 Should we add the scallops? Should I get bigger frames for her gallery wall?

Or should I just leave it as is… because she’s gonna wanna change it again once she’s out of the preschool stage!

I’m thinking the latter, but hopefully we raise a colour-loving queen and the room is enjoyed for years to come 🌈

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