Neutral Kids Playroom Design Plans
Finally getting around to our playroom, here are our design plans for a neutral kids playroom design, complete with budget friendly finds and creative storage ideas to tame the clutter
Because what do you do when you have a shared girls’ room that isn’t finished, a baby due in a matter of mere weeks and can barely stay awake doing mundane tasks like showering?
Decide to take on another 8 week project as part of the One Room Challenge!!!! Look how smart we are!!!!
In my defense, the reason we decided to tackle this now is because I’m going to be looking for any excuse I can to entertain our other 2 hoodlums while we settle into a new normal routine with baby girl.
What is the One Room Challenge?
If you’re not familiar, the One Room Challenge is just that – A challenge to complete one room in a set amount of time. 8 weeks to be exact.
You get to do it alongside featured designers who are PHENOMENAL and super talented, but also more regular people like me!
What room did we choose for the One Room Challenge?
Well, if you didn’t guess from the title we are FINALLY tackling the PLAYROOM!
We have been talking about this for YEARS. It’s actually the first room I wanted to tackle when we moved in almost 4 years ago and yet…..here we are. Unfinished as all get out.
The Playroom Before
These 3 photos are all from listing photos when we first toured the house 4 years ago. And even here I fell in love with the space. I just knew it could be something great. The room is actually huge if you can’t tell from the million pieces of furniture in here.
Our first “step” in making this a playroom was putting some seating up here and her toys.
Because we were hoping to either adopt or have another baby one day, we kept this glider from Charlotte’s nursery and put it in the same spot as we saw in the listing photos until Josiah came home to live with us and then it became a staple piece of furniture in his neutral nursery.
Then we finally got around to painting it Sherwin Williams Sea Salt. Baby steps, guys.
I just for some reason couldn’t wrap my brain around how I wanted this room to be laid out because of the fact that we have those little elf doors on both sides of the room and actually use them for storage.
After much deliberation and different ways we could have this room designed, here are our (semi) final neutral playroom design plans!
Neutral Kids Playroom
I say these plans are semi final because the reality is with Covid, so many things are out of stock and so many things are being delayed so I’m keeping ALLLLLL my fingers and everything else crossed that these plans stick fairly closely.
What was important to us in this playroom design?
First and foremost, we wanted allllll the toy storage. There are tons of toys up in this place and we want a way to keep those toys organized in one way or another.
Next of importance in a playroom design is kid friendly. While we want this place to grow with them, right now, we have little kids and that means messes, art supplies that are bound to make their way on furniture or rugs, and crumbs everywhere.
I also wanted a good seating option too because kids are rarely up here without adults, at least at this age. So we needed to get creative with playroom seating. Floor cushions are great for kids, but adults may or may not be able to get up and down from the floor that easily.
Neutral colors. Yes, I wanted it to be fun, but I also wanted it to be fairly neutral in color scheme without it having to be black and white.
Neutral Playroom Design Elements
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01. Sherwin Williams Sea Salt – We currently have this color in our bedroom as well and love it. I plan on diving deeper into this color a little later on in this challenge much like I’ve done with the other color that’s all over this house – Sherwin Williams Alabaster.
02. Tan/Neutral Paint Color – I most likely won’t be painting anything this color per se, but this neutral color provides a nice way to tie in color while still remaining neutral.
03. Sherwin Williams Pure White – Much like the rest of the craftsman style trim in this house and even our kitchen cabinets, we will be using Sherwin Williams Pure White as our trim color of choice in this space.
04. Rattan Daybed – This was an accident, but it actually is what inspired this entire room. Walking around World Market looking for pendant lights for our flip house, I walked past this and thought, “This would be cute in a playroom because you could use it as a bed, but since it’s ‘open’ in the back, it wouldn’t make the room feel closed off.
Boom. Done. So we built the rest of the playroom design kind of around this.
05. Ikea BILLY Bookcases – Because of the sloped ceilings, we had to be careful about what we wanted to add in terms of height. These come in different sizes, but the small ones with the 3 shelves fit our space the best. And they’re the cheapest. SCORE!
06. Ikea TROFAST Toy Storage – I measured the width of our wall and with the BILLY bookcases, this fits right in the middle like a glove. As if it were designed that way. Because this will go under the window, I wanted it to be something that would fit under the window.
Jury is still out on whether or not we will add some cute cushions and make a little window seat. I’m not sure it’ll be needed, but we will see how things shake out.
07. Ikea TÄTING storage baskets – These are fairly new and since these Billy bookcases are fairly shallow, it’s hard finding baskets that will fit. I think we will only be able to get 2 per shelf, but that’s okay! That’s still going to give us a total of 16 baskets (since I don’t want any on the top shelf)
08. Neutral colorful rug – Finding a rug for our shared girls room was SO OVERWHELMING, and this space was no different. I didn’t want to spend a fortune and I wanted something that would add some color, but not overwhelm the space or add too much business.
I found this rug from Walmart and I’m taking a bit of a risk of it not totally matching, but I’m living on a wing and a prayer in most parts of my life at this point anyhoo.
09. Neutral fun decals – I decided I didn’t want to paint the bookcases. Too much work and I don’t have that in me right now. I also was going to put wallpaper on the back, but honestly that felt like it might be too busy too and yes, I want kids to have fun and know toys will be everywhere in here, but I also need it to be somewhat calming since this play space is right outside my office (that we did for the last One Room Challenge!)
It’s so hard to focus when everything around me is just a disaster. So I decided adding these cute little U shaped decals to the backs of the bookcases would be the perfect amount of “something” without it being too much.
Other Design Elements
Because we are trying to do this on a budget, there are a few things that we have that we won’t be changing.
We built Char this little DIY desk in the dormer a few months back. We love it, it’s cute, and it’s staying. Instead of putting a pint sized little table and chairs in the middle of the floor and have it take up a lot of the floor space for the play area, we opted to keep this.
But I may have a little idea for a place we can add a pint sized table and chairs as part of this project, so stay tuned for that 😉
We could have taken this out and put a bean bag or something and created a little reading nook, but we figured there are 2 other corners in this room in which we could do that if needed.
Plus, the girl will read anywhere. She’s about to have a super cute rattan daybed she can use to read on if her little heart desires.
You can also see in this shot that we have a black fan in here. We do have a second air unit up there, but we typically keep it warmer than the rest of the house since we’re not up there that much. That fan is CLUTCH and I could probably have found a cuter one, but this has a remote so I’m here for that.
I feel like I’m absolutely bonkers for trying to get this all accomplished at 36w pregnant knowing that this baby girl will hopefully be in our arms smack dab in the middle of this, but I’ve just accepted it’s who I am as a person so let’s ride.
Our first go at the One Room Challenge was completely gutting this guest bathroom and it took us 11 months instead of 6 weeks and we adopted a baby boy in the midst of it so this ain’t our first rodeo.
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