AD – This post contains gifted items.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think a lot of us who have kids (and some kind of aesthetic taste!) really struggle with how to decorate their rooms. So much plastic, turtles, superheroes, firemen (or is this just my child?!). When we first moved here three years ago Ted was only just one, so he had no input whatsoever when I created his vintage inspired nursery. I was trying to get as much of the house done as possible so budgets were tight, I had sourced some cheap second hand furniture which I upcycled and painted, bought a few wooden toys and a vintage horse rocking chair. I put up a showstopper of a pastoral wallpaper from Farrow & Ball called Gable which had exactly the kind of interwar vibe I was looking for.

  We loved the room, it was just perfect, but it became tired over time, the rocking horse chair broke (and one does wonder how when children had been playing on it for 70 years before unharmed!) and the parts that had been make-do-and-mend started to look the wrong side of shabby chic!  

Teds room is a little in flux since he has inherited the box room of the house. It accommodates the toddler bed we bought last year but I know there’s no way a single bed will be feasible without the room looking horribly crowded. But I’m also not ready to give up the spacious study next door to our bedroom, just yet!

  So, the room had to be a compromise space, one which works for Ted now, but which isn’t so cutesy that I’ll have to redecorate it when I move my desk and bookcases in. Getting the balance between a use-able space which could be converted later to another purpose without leaving it feeling sterile was a tight brief to balance, but I think, after months of thinking about it, we have achieved something that works.

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