Right now my to-do list looks something like this:
- Redecorate the living room, the upstairs hallway, and our old bedroom;
- Buy a mini van with the highest safety ratings and also hopefully some cache (that’s possible, right?);
- Clean all surfaces in the house with non-toxic products, including walls and ceilings;
- Clean all surfaces in the basement with straight bleach (cats are supposed to be clean, so why are mine so filthy?);
- Push a human out of my bits.
Of course I can’t actually do any of these things myself (except #5, hopefully), because I’m laid up with a huge belly and a condition called PGP, but I’ve been making plans and scheming hard for when I’m able-bodied again.
Our plan is to have baby boy in our room for the first few months, and then to move him into Opal’s room, and move Opal into our old room. Opal is down with this plan on one condition: her room has to be purple and pink.
Our old bedroom, soon to be Opal’s new bedroom.
Purple and pink are surprising favorites for a kid who refuses to wear dresses even for special occasions, and whose current interests include dinosaurs, construction equipment, and slugs. But she’s a person all her own, and her absolute favorite colors are, and have been for a long time, purple and pink.
I love pink, but purple isn’t one of my go-to colors. I wanted to use wallpaper in Opal’s room, and I thought long and hard about Hygge and West’s “Daydream” on the ceiling, like in this room:
I ordered samples in green and in purple. I loved the green and figured I could work in lots of purple and pink through textiles and art, like this:
But I made the mistake of not hiding the purple wallpaper sample, and Opal got really attached to it, and to the idea of purple birds in her room in particular. And by attached I mean she slept with the sample in her bed for weeks. Trouble is I didn’t like the purple version at all. The hue was cold, and having lived in her future bedroom through many long winters, I know that room does best with warmer tones. So I started looking for a purple bird alternative.
After lots of searching I came across wallpaper that fits the bill from Trustworth. I ordered a sample, and started putting together a design.
The wallpaper is beautiful, and maybe just the tiniest bit creepy in that art nouveau way I love. The purple is more of a warm mauve than chilly lilac, which I like better, and while it’s hard to tell from the photo, the background is the prettiest blush pink.
I put together a mood board to see how it might come together, and this is what I ended up with:
This rendering is more matchy than I think it would be in real life, and while I like it, I’m not totally sold. Somehow it doesn’t feel very “Opal” to me. If I can get her off the purple bird kick, or incorporate purple birds in some non-wallpaper way, I might scrap the wallpaper idea altogether and do something a little less involved, but more playful, like this:
Still pink and purple, but more fun, and more flexible if she changes her mind about her favorite colors.
What direction do you think I should go? Give in to the icy purple birds, go with the mauve Trustworth avians, or not use wallpaper at all? Do you let your kids decide what their rooms will be like? Or just let them offer general guidelines?
