Home: Spare Bedroom Refresh

Dougie the Maine Coon is certainly enjoying the new room

I think when a child leaves home there are probably two camps of people: those who leave their room as it was and those who do a redecoration. Obviously, I am in the latter camp. My eldest left home earlier this year (I did leave his room intact throughout his time at uni), and to be honest it was very overdue a thorough clean and decoration.

It's fair to say that I went pretty bold with the decoration too! I feel that I have got to an age where I want to make the decorating choices I want and not pander to the "what if I sell it" crowd. The room is in the darkest corner of the house (north east), so needed a warm tone to it. I chose Dulux Soft Peach which when I picked it off the shelf took me right back to the eighties and the M&S peach toiletries. The mural is only on the one wall - it's too bold for any more.

Before: Believe it or not, this is after being scrubbed with sugar soap!

The mural is  Abstract Leaf Shapes Large in the orange colourway from Wallpaper Direct. I made a couple of errors in hanging this - the first howler was in cutting the hole for the wall socket lower than it should have been. I guess the beauty of this collage type print is that I did just that - created a collage effect over it! The other is that I think I misread the mix instructions for the paste and made it too watery. So there was a bit of re-sticking to do, but it has held up pretty well since.

The wardrobe itself wasn't too old, but I hated my son's previous choice of dark black-brown doors, so we switched them out for some creamy white ones from Ikea and added in the leather handles too. The bedside table was a new purchase (Tolkning from Ikea).

I really wanted a soft curtain, despite the fact that I realise it's not very practical, so went for a couple of natural coloured voile panels with macrame detail , and a new curtain rail, both from Dunelm.

And finally, I added a picture shelf opposite the bed, as I thought it would be quite nice to rotate displays.

The whole redecoration came in just shy of £1,000, but half of that was for the new carpet. It was probably more than I wanted to spend on a bedroom that is rarely going to be used, but it had only been decorated once (and then only one wall) in the 14 years since we moved in, so I don't think that is too bad really.

Love Mrs Jones x