When we bought our holiday home in Cape Town we knew we wanted to have as many bedrooms as we could fit so that it would be easy to have lots of guests stay over. One of the rooms upstairs was small and narrow and originally used as a library with floor to ceiling book shelves built in. But having seeing this cute room I knew we could make it into a fun and funky bunk room for kids. Here a few tricks I did to make the space exactly that.

The shelves in the “library” were great, so I was not keen to just rip them out. What I decided to do was place the bunk bed right up against the one wall of the shelves. Which actually worked great as there are now lots of little nooks for late night reading books, toys etc. The other shelves were filled with toys and books and on the far end I had Pedersen & Lennard make custom doors, which made the ideal wardrobe for clothing, already complete with shelving.

As the room is for guests, I decided to decorate the room in bright primary colours, that way it would suit girls or boys. It is leaning a bit to the traditional “boy” style but I think that is because I’ve never had the chance to do one, and so totally loved shopping in the “boys” section.

Inspired by this bedroom, I knew I had to have the same wow factor of an Atlas backdrop. An easy solution that also solved the problem of shelving on the “wall” by the bunk bed. Here a canavs map from IKEA (this is a similar one), now serves as a backdrop and temporary wall in one (not yet installed in these pics though).

Most of windows in the house have white American Shutters but also curtains. For this room though there is just not enough space for curtains, so the blinds were the best solution. And even allow for space for a little play table and chairs.

I tried to keep all the big pieces in the room neutral: bed, shelves, walls, carpet – that way when all the colourful toys and bedding were added it wouldn’t overwhelm the room.

 

 

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