Summer bedding for a kid's room

Jasper has now had his alcove bed for a full year (remember how it came to be?!) and to say we love it is a major understatement. In reality, I’m super jealous–he has the best room in the house. I haven’t done a thing to our house since we wrapped up the show–I’m so tired. But you know what I can do? Change the sheets. Changing the sheets and bedding is such a simple way to add in variation in the room and note the passing of the seasons, not to mention the need to rotate bedding. Spoonflower challenged me to show how new bedding would work in Jasper’s room throughout the year and we’re kicking it off for summer. Is there anything better than summer bedding for a kid’s room? It screams fun.

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A post shared by Brittany Jepsen — The House That Lars Built (@houselarsbuilt)

Here’s the before:

in with the old Brittany Jepsen room reveal

Now, I went a little overboard (who me?!) and added in their peel and stick wallpaper onto the walls and in the bed but obviously, a quick switch out doesn’t have to be so involved as adding on wallpaper. It can be as simple as changing out a duvet cover or adding in new pillows or switching out some sheets.

On top of that, I wanted to see what I would do for a boy’s room AND a girl’s room (because I will always mourn the daughter I will never have ;). This brings me so much joy.

Selecting the bedding

The beauty of Spoonflower is that they have endless possibilities. Conversely, the tricky part of Spoonflower is that they have endless possibilities–amiright?! How to narrow down all those options?! Well, in my case, I needed something that would go with a strong yellow bed and blue/green trim on the windows so a lot of my decisions centered around that. What also made it easier for me was that I’ve been keeping track of my favorite artists and fabrics in my collections.

I first went to my existing collections to see if anything would work and then made a new folder to narrow them down. There were 8 pages of options–ha. I have a hard time making decisions obviously! Spoonflower also has a great feature called “Fabric you might like” with more options at the bottom of the page so I ended up finding a lot of options that would be fun to use. They’re all in that collection.

I shared all my progress with you on Instagram Stories because I had a hard time deciding what to do and you had a lot of great feedback, which I totally used–thank you.

Boy’s Room Bedding Refresh

The boy’s room and the girl’s selections could obviously be for anybody, any child, but the way I approached them was so different–romantic florals for the girl’s room and more maritime for the boys room.

I stumbled onto this fish pattern and knew I wanted to use it in some way–I just didn’t know how. It feels appropriate for a child but also slightly sophisticated, but also acts as great canvas for adding color on top. I created a really simple mock up in Photoshop and tried it out as wallpaper, bedding, pillows, you name it. So many ways to take it–you can see from our collection that I considered A LOT of options!

I wanted to add in some bright colors too so I started to create a narrative to the scene. Jasper’s bedroom theme is already maritime in theme, but more old school in feel so I wanted to modernize it and make it more colorful and fun. With all the bold and graphic nautical flags, there’s so much to work with. There are a number of Spoonflower artists who specialize in bold graphics so I assembled a collection of some of my favorites in lots of colors. I tied it in with a nautical flag print from this artist.

To add the cherry on top, I found a great cloud wallpaper in a corresponding grey/white palette to the fishes. I liked the etching quality to it to add in that sense of sophistication and antique-ness. You all convinced me to try out the clouds in the blue palette so I went with it! Both would have worked!

I ADORE how the boy’s room turned out!

Boy’s room bedding details

Here’s exactly what we ordered to get the look:

Shop the boy’s room

Girl’s Bedroom Summer Refresh

Now, onto the girl’s room! What I would give to have a girl to design for (if I haven’t made that abundantly clear by now–hahaha!). I explored a lot of directions for this one. There are some wallpapers and fabrics that I’ve been hoping to use for years and I finally got a chance to consider them.

I tried out a trellis, chinoiserie, espalier, tons of florals. Ultimately, Granny’s Garden, our own collection, was coming out at the time I was making the decisions and I REALLY wanted to see it in an actual space. A lot of the fabrics from that collection would have worked, but I decided to go with the Gloria’s Zinnias because of that gorgeous blue and the tie into the yellow of the bed. All of our florals from the collection work so well with it so I added in our rose, and mini zinnies.

Pattern Mixing in a kid’s room

In my dreams I’d spread the florals everywhere, but I tried to not get too carried away so I added in that great blue and white stripe that I found in this shop. It felt a bit like pajamas and there’s no better feeling than getting into some pjs at the end of a day. I used it for the curtains and the walls inside the bed. Then I used the zinnia wallpaper outside the bed as well as on the duvet. The kicker was a coordinating houndstooth in a great green and pink and used the trellis for the bedsheets–it’s such a great trellis–I’ll be keeping it in my pattern bank.

Reading nook pillows

One of the cutest parts of the room is the bench under the window next to the bed. It’s a perfect place for switching out pillows for the season. I went to town adding in florals for the girl’s room and bold graphics for the boy’s room.

Summer bedding

I LOVED this spring/summer bedding challenge! It helped me explore the potential of what the room has to offer. Bedding, even one pillow, can do a lot to make a room feel refreshed (you don’t need to change out the wallpaper each season–ha!) and this was such a great reminder of this.

Stay tuned for our back to school/fall refresh followed by our holiday edition.

You can see all the options I saved here.