Budget-Friendly Playroom Makeover

The goal in this budget-friendly playroom makeover was to bring in some color and some fun decor but not to make it too overwhelmingly kiddie, and honestly, I think the final look is the perfect combination!

The room has so much more personality now, the kids love it, and it’s still grown-up enough for Alex to be relegated there when he wants to watch football and I want to light a candle, mindlessly scroll my phone and watch TV in the living room.

For full appreciation, let’s throw it back to the ‘before’ when we first moved in, in all its beige glory:

And now for the afters:

Projects in this budget-friendly playroom

The best part about this room makeover is that there wasn’t anything dramatic about it: there wasn’t a need to remove walls, move electrical, or use any fancy tools beyond what’s in a basic DIYer toolbox.

The makeover of this space also happened in phases for us, starting with the built-ins last spring, followed by the fireplace mantel around christmas, tiling the fireplace this summer and finally this last month’s work that included the ceilings, a new fan, a gallery wall, painting the fireplace mantel and generally finishing up the trim work.

We used a lot of leftovers from other projects like scrap wood, paint, and the fireplace tile that I’ve actually been hauling around since our first kitchen makeover four years ago and the biggest chunk of the budget was probably the built-ins, where we used stock base cabinets and built up from there.

For the decor, I tried to lean into displaying a lot of what we already had that gave the fun kid vibe: colorful books, stuffed animals, toy cars, the little animal figurines. Adding a couple of those little animals to the tops of the photo frames is probably the kids’ favorite part – they think it’s just about the silliest thing they’ve ever seen.

The details

• Paint colors
  • Room: Shoelace by Behr
  • Trim: Accessible Beige by Sherwin Williams
  • Fireplace: Steep Cliff Gray by Benjamin Moore (the same one we used in our moody hallway makeover!)
• Secondhand/thrifted finds: Fireplace mantel, kids chairs, gallery wall frames, car shelves, kids books
• Gallery wall art: Etsy printables

• Mantel decor: Felt ball rainbow and arched mirror
• Fan: Hunter Fan Company, the Lykke model. (Disclosure: This project was sponsored by Hunter over on Instagram, but we genuinely love how his fan looks and functions and it was so easy to install.)
• Ceiling: Here’s a how-to on our beadboard ceiling strategy

We are so happy this space is finally feeling done after being half-finished for an entire year. This room sees some *heavy* use from our toddlers so I’m sure the little cars on the shelf and the neatly piled books will be absolute chaos in about 90 seconds but that’s what it’s there for!

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