A Perfectly Purple Little Girl's Room Makeover

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We are thrilled to be a part of Sherwin-Williams National Painting Week again this year. It’s one of our favorite weeks because it involves some of our favorite bloggers doing amazing things with paint! If you haven’t had a look at all of the amazing things happening this week, please take a look at Thrifty Decor Chic’s walk-in closet makeover and Recycle Consign & Design’s chair makeover.

If you’re more of the moving-images type, here’s a short video of the room makeover:

Over the last couple years, we’ve played it safe with our color choices – always selecting neutrals. So, this year, we decided to go BIG (and Alice Walker-style), choosing the color purple! This was an unlikely choice for us, and we knew we needed to find the perfect room to mesh with the bold, beautiful color. Lucky for us, our three-year-old niece and her parents were looking to redo her room; she recently moved out of her toddler bed and into a vintage iron-framed one. Her parents were in the midst of planning out her room when purple came into our lives.

Our niece loves the color purple, and was pretty excited at the prospect of it gracing her walls. And, her mom, Deborah, happens to be an interior designer with great taste (and not a lot of free time with three little kids), so this project was a fun way for us to connect and create a beautiful room for a little girl we all love.

Before we show you what we did, let’s take a look at where we started:

Good bones, but the room didn’t quite say “Three Year Old-Girl”. Deborah had purchased a vintage iron bed from Craigslist, and wanted to incorporate it into the design. The main bummer about the bed was the color, a bland off-white. We desperately wanted to paint it a bright color, but we’re currently dealing with an obnoxious winter that in completely not conducive to spray painting. The other problem the bed posed was that it took up a huge portion of the room, leaving little floor space for play.

Bed woes aside, we knew a new color would make a dramatic impact on the room, and began searching the Sherwin-Williams’ “violet” color group.

Sherwin-Williams

Our favorite way to keep track and collaborate on these types of projects is to create a pin board on Pinterest. Deborah and I started pinning up a storm and eventually decided that our color palette would be defined by this gorgeous rug:

Land of Nod

The rug helped narrow down our search for the right purple, and after placing several test swatches up on the wall, we found it: Wallflower (SW 6281)!

Sherwin-Williams Wallflower SW 6281

It’s the perfect purple because it’s neither too warm nor too cool, and it’s mauviness makes it work beautifully with the warmer and cooler purples in the rug.

The room is on the small side (8 1/2′ x 13 1/2′), with a chimney bump out running along one wall. From the onset, we knew we wanted to accent the bump out with a vibrant color. The beauty of the Wallflower color is that it’s flexible; we were able to pair its soft tones with a giant blast of color, Ruby Shade (SW 6572), with nary a quarrel between the two tones.

Here’s a post-paint photo we took on our cell phone after the paint dried:

Can I get a “what, what”? Despite the poor lighting, the difference is astounding. I am continually knocked over by the power of paint.

Once our paint colors were sorted out and the rug was in place, we were able to put a bevy of finishing touches on the room. We discovered that by simply turning the bed 90 degrees, the problems of the size of the bed, and it’s not so lovely color were solved.

Sometimes, when dealing with vintage pieces that have a lot of character like the iron bed, it’s easy to get pulled into the piece’s style. We really wanted to be sure the space felt fresh and new, and put together a mood board to help guide us through this process.

Using a visual aid like this is so helpful because it helps inform every decision you make. It also served as a great reminder – design/style-wise – of what was important. For example, we fell in love with this gold tiered pendant light. And, of course, it was out of stock. After shedding many tears over these tiers, we got it together and decided to do some vintage shopping. In the end, we found an amazing vintage orange pendant light with stunning lines.

With all of the color and pattern in the room, we wanted window treatments that were simple and classic. We chose a classic roman shade from Blinds.com in Lexi White. We ordered the cordless version of this shade to make sure the room was safe for our niece. The soft fold style of the shade adds a touch of girly flair and gives the windows a gentle movement.

The room turned out beautifully! It’s purple perfection, and our sweet niece is in love. Here are all the ‘after’ photos to inspire you to go paint a room purple:

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