The Dot’s Purple Bedroom Makeover

Hello and Happy New Year! It’s been a whirlwind January around here project-wise. I haven’t officially totaled them all up, but I have at least ten projects in the works at the same time. Needless to say, the house is a mess. But I’m excited that I have finally finished one project–my daughter’s purple bedroom makeover.

Before I dive into the makeover, let me take you back to almost four years ago when I was pregnant and expecting my first girl. I was thrilled to be decorating a girl’s nursery. I settled on the oh-so-popular flower mural wall in pink and added lots of white and gold accents. It was darling.

Then The Dot came along and guess what her favorite color is. Not pink. Purple.

I staved off changing the room for a few years thinking she might change her mind. After all, Lamborghini’s favorite color changes every day. But not The Dot. She is a rock when it comes to likes and preferences. And even going back and watching old videos of her as a toddler, it is clear that she has always loved purple. I just didn’t realize it at the time.

Long story short, I decided to give her room a little makeover using one of the most budget-friendly room makeover tools I know: fresh paint. The flower wall had been an accent wall, and I decided to paint that over with a bright light purple color. She already had other purple decor that made it into the room over the years, so the wall was a good way to tie everything together.

So without further ado, let me take you on a mini-tour of her new purple room.

Wall Color

The wall color change was the big-impact update to the room.

The purple wall is a slight variation of Benjamin Moore’s Lavender Ice (BM 2069-60). I say “slight variation” because it turns out the sample I purchased had a bit more red in it than the true Lavender Ice. The incredibly patient guys at Benjamin Moore and I have no idea what happened, but after 30 minutes of troubleshooting and my professed love for this obscure purple color, they gave me the new formula and said “hold onto this if you want more.”

The real Lavender Ice is lovely, but this color is a tad bit brighter and has a slight pink undertone to it. I photographed the room at different points in the day, and you can see in the photos how the color changes from lavender to a lavender-pink as the afternoon sun hits the room.

To save money I used sample paint to cover the walls. I had some leftover Sherwin Williams sample paint in white and used that as a primer over the flowers. Then I used my pint of Benjamin Moore purple. If I had used two coats of primer, I probably could have covered the entire wall with one pint of the sample paint.

Benjamin Moore’s sample pint is the same formula as their Ben line of paint, so it’s perfectly OK to use on the walls. If you’ve ever used Benjamin Moore paint, though, you’ll notice a big difference in the application of the Ben paint compared to their higher-end lines.

It is lot thinner than the Regal or Aura paint and took me about three coats to get good coverage. But I had time and was determined to keep the cost down.

The other walls and window trim are painted in Behr ultra pure white.

It’s the base paint for the Behr line. I basically grabbed the paint off of the shelf and rolled with it. It felt strange not having a paint color mixed, but I love the bright white feel.

Bedding

I recently added the purple bedding to the room right before Christmas as a present for The Dot. We found the heart sheets at At Home for $15 for the set (linked here). The duvet covers are from Pottery Barn Teen, and I purchased them at a discount when our local store closed a few years ago. Don’t tell Mr. L, but I *might* have bought five twin duvet covers that day. For ease of making the bed, we don’t use top sheets for the kids so I like being able to take off the duvet to wash the cover.

I had the purple duvets stashed away in The Dot’s closet, and she was soooo surprised when she saw the whole setup. I still need to add a throw pillow or two for some extra purple, but the single pillow works for us right now.

Furniture

We built the bed frames a few years ago using inexpensive pine wood, which I painted IKEA white.

I was inspired by the Emery bed at Pottery Barn Kids (linked here) but not the price. Each of our beds cost a little under $100 to make. I can share the bed plans if anyone else is interested in building their own. The other fun thing about our beds is that the the PBK trundle fits under them like a glove.

The dresser is from IKEA (linked here) and is one of my all-time favorite pieces. We have this same dresser in our bedroom and a smaller version in the baby’s room. It has nice deep drawers and provides the perfect amount of space for girl’s clothing. I have all of The Dot’s folded clothes in the top smaller drawers–one for short sleeve shirts, one for long sleeve shirts, one for pants and shorts, and one for her dresses. This system makes it really easy for her to pick out her clothes in the morning.

I found the star wall hooks at Hobby Lobby for under $20. They are perfect for holding all of The Dot’s purple dress-up costumes.

I debated putting a night stand between the two beds and may do so when she is older. At the same time, I don’t want anything to get in the way of the trundle bed. Plus right now the kids need all the space they can get for play.

Room Decor

Most of the wall decor was either free or a DIY project. The flamingo was created by the talented Lucy at Craftberry Bush (linked here). I simply printed out the free download and put it in an IKEA frame.

The “Ta Da” gold art lettering was inspired by a similar piece I saw at PB Kids several years ago.

I printed out the letters on my computer and then traced them on poster board and used an X-Acto knife (Amazon link here) to cut them out. Then I overlaid the letters on top of another piece of poster board that I had painted gold. I plopped that in a frame from IKEA too.

The cat art between both beds is a new piece I made over the weekend.

I’ve recently discovered the ProCreate app on the iPad and have so much fun “painting” with the Apple Pencil. This was my first time printing out one of my paintings, and I was very happy with the results. It cost a whopping $0.97 to print an 11 x 17 inch color copy at the UPS store. I’ll do a blog post on how I use and print from the ProCreate app soon.

I got the idea for the cat art from a Frida Kahlo-inspired piece my mother-in-law and I saw while shopping at Home Goods. The Frida cat was quite funny and had the Frida eyebrows and of course the flowers in its hair along with a scarf. It was very cute, but the only problem was the cat (like Frida in her self-portrait) didn’t look very happy. I totally get the artistic reason for the frown, but I didn’t want a frowny cat in my daughter’s room. So I decided to go with a simple painting of a happy cat with flowers in its hair.

The mirror over the dresser is from Target (link here). The lamps are from IKEA, but I painted them gold and painted the lamp shades using leftover acrylic paint from the flower mural wall.

We also found these cute purple lights at Target over Christmas and hung them over The Dot’s curtains.

They add a fun nighttime glow to the room. They are also good for dance parties with the disco ball she got from Santa over Christmas.

Last but not least, The Dot and I made this purple glitter light switch cover to add a bit more sparkle to her room (she loves glitter).

Check out this post if you’d like to find out how to make your own custom light switch cover plate.

We Heart Purple

To be completely honest, purple has always been my least favorite color. After having The Dot, though, it has completely grown on me and I love how much joy something as simple as a color brings to her life.

That pretty much covers the mini-makeover of the purple room. I plan to add a few more purple items here and there (and definitely have one more purple project in the works in the kitchen that I need to cross off my list). Stay tuned ❤.