ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: THE REVEAL

 

Finally! We made it to the reveal! 

Thanks to all of you who followed along over the past six weeks, and thank you so much to Linda from the One Room Challenge for the invitation to participate! I was truly honored.  And finally a big thank you to the media sponsor of The One Room Challenge, House Beautiful.

Just to recap my name is Stephanie Kraus and I own a boutique residential interior design firm outside of Philadelphia. Custom design is our passion and we specialize in creating unique, bespoke interiors for our clients. In this case, it is for my 8-year old son Christopher 🙂

I’ll be honest it was quite a challenge to design a room for an 8-year old boy while everyone was watching 🙂  Boys this age are past the cute and adorable toddler stage, and too young for a cool hip teen room! Not to mention Christopher has the smallest room in the house, with awkwardly placed window and door openings that made it hard to place furniture and still leave him room to breathe. In addition he had no interest in redesigning his room. Ha! His only request was that it should be blue. I took a little poetic license and included all of his favorite things in his room … dogs, sports and gaming!

My goal was to make Chris’s room functional, colorful and fun. I also wanted to make sure his room felt authentic to him and not overly decorated, so we used most of his things to style and decorate the space with, which meant rummaging through our basement and garage! Much easier (and less expensive) than most photo shoots 🙂

If you want to see the before pictures you can check them out here.

Let’s look at Chris’s room now and then we can discuss the details!

 

 

 

What do you think? We love it! Now let’s discuss the process, the details, and the decisions we made.

The jumping off point for the room was this fabulous wallpaper from Milton and King. It was blue, bold and boyish. We applied the wallpaper to only one wall to keep the space from feeling too dark.  Chris only has one small window in his room that faces east so it only gets sun in the morning, and I didn’t want him to come home after school to a room that feels gloomy and cave-like. I wanted it to be bright and fresh – just like him!

After I made the wall covering selection, I decided on this fabric from Stroheim for the headboard and bed skirt. It comes off the bolt as a vertical pattern, but I had my workroom run it horizontally to provide contrast to the vertical stripes on the wallpaper.

 

 

The bed fabric not only looks great in the space but it’s a crypton fabric so it’s pretty much indestructible. And if you know Chris you’ll know this is vital. I also loved the various blues found in the fabric and thought they paired perfectly with the wallpaper. 

Chris’ room is super small so storage is at a premium, which is why I chose to do a custom bed skirt vs. a full custom bed with side rails and a foot board. With a bed skirt we have additional hidden storage under the bed where we put out of season clothing, pinnies (so we don’t loose them) and his growing collection of sweatshirts!

A custom bed skirt is a fantastic solution for a finished looking bed. A tailored bed skirt like this one doesn’t shift, move or drag along the ground like most bed skirts found in retail stores. Once you go custom you can never go back. It’s like a perfectly fitted little black dress!

The lamp I selected from Lamps Plus had the variation in the blues that I love. We also purchased a new nightstand and dresser in a grey-washed finish with bronze pulls. The nightstand has a charging station built right in …SOLD! I mean really …what 8-year old boy would not be impressed with that?

The washed linen bedding is from Pom-Pom at Home and it’s gorgeous. It neutralizes all of the blue and white happening in this part of the room and it infuses the area with a different texture. I added a little dog pillow that I found at High Point because Chris is a huge fan of dogs.

If you would like to know where you can purchase really soft sheets some of my favorite sheeting is from Boll and Branch and you can purchase those here. And 90 percent of the time I purchase white sheets. They are so versatile!

The new mattress, box spring and bed frame came from Overstock and are super comfortable!

The backgammon game on the shelf of the night stand is my husband’s from when he was a little boy and my kids still play with it. The books on the night stand were found in our basement hoping it may encourage Chris to read a little more at night and play a little less Fortnite. I’ll let you know how that works out.

 

 

Okay I’m being brutally honest here when I say this Haiku fan is my favorite part of the room because it’s Chris’ fave 🙂 It’s super sleek and is operated by remote control so he can control the speed of the fan at night. When specifying interior fans I rarely specify ones that contrast the ceiling color, but in this case I deliberately chose black because I wanted it to be a part of the design. The black also ties into his dresser hardware.  This fan has sharp design features and brings some interest to an otherwise boring ceiling!

And how about that monkey print called disco nap from Gray Malin. Chris LOVES it! I was going to put the print above his bed (in a smaller size) but I wanted to spread the cool design elements around the space. I knew the large area next to the bed would be blank and thought it was a perfect spot for my monkey. Chris can lay in bed staring at him every night. What a great way to end your day, right?

 

 

This mirror is from Overstock and is super boyish and adds lots of texture in the space. It has a metal frame and hangs from a thick rope. Chris desperately needs a mirror in his room to tame  his blonde curly hair so the mirror is not only decorative it serves a very important purpose. The globe has been in my basement for eons. I found the cloud book ends at West Elm and the letter sign at Pottery Barn Teen.

 

 

The fabric for the roman shade is from Fabricut. You can find it here.  I needed a little pattern on the window and wanted to pop the window trim with a bold blue. The open shelves are wrapped in metal and are super cool. The sailboat, lacrosse sticks, football and basketball are all ours found while shopping in our garage. The only thing that’s a bit more special is the signed Villanova men’s basketball which I felt needed a special stand – they are Chris’ favorite basketball team, and the blue and white color matches perfectly. Bonus!

 

 

That funky art piece is also from Overstock. It provides a cool focal point on that side of the room. Chris’s dress shirt is hung on this navy velvet hanger from Overstock which I used to organize his whole closet! The best hangers ever -they keep his clothes straight, organized and looking stylish! This room was a lot of fun to design and it was a labor of love for my curly haired little blonde. I hope he enjoys it for years to come!

Thanks again for following along with me. I hope you enjoyed this little journey.

All photographs by Kyle Born Photography 

Now I’m going to grab a cup of coffee and see what these other extremely talented designers accomplished who chose much more challenging projects than I did. I’m so impressed with their talent and dedication!  You can check them out here…

Apartment 34 | Beginning in the Middle | Coco & Jack | The English Room | The Gold Hive

Gray Malin | Jenna Sue Design | Jojotastic | Kelly Rogers Int. | Linda Holt | Marcus Design

Michelle Gage | Natasha Habermann | The Painted House | Rambling Renovators

Sacramento Street | Shannon Claire | Sketch 42 | Stephanie Kraus | Bisou Style

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