Time for a change…

Honey?

Knock, knock, knock…

Do you wanna clean your bedroom? Or pick your clothes up from the floor? I wish you’d put your books away, I’m turning grey, becoming such a bore.

You really should be sleeping.

Please don’t paint

your nails on your pillowcase!

Do you wanna clean your bedroom? Please stop using so much perfume.

Time for change…

A bedroom makeover from Bespoke Room

When we moved into this house six years ago, it was mostly brown. Whilst The Bug and Actually Daddy settled in quickly, GG and I missed our old home. She was four, and craved her hot pink room, full of Disney princess outfits and fluffy fairies. So very quickly, I recreated the theme in her new room. Since then, a series of minor additions have been made, posters have come and gone, and a brief flirtation with One Direction resulted in a duvet cover that she can no longer abide.

It’s time for a room makeover.

In a classic anti-pink moment she declared her room must be blue. But not any old blue; teal and acqua are the desired hues now, and she is very specific.

The list of ideal additions to her room went further than a mere change of paint colour. She wants:

• Shelving – if you’ve watched the video above you’ll see that she is a hoarder. And she’s messy! She needs more places to put… stuff.
• Cushions – the fluffier, the better.
• A rather expensive, designer egg-shaped chair.
• Somewhere for her friends to sleep.
• A double bed (I think this is a lash-out at her bunk-bed – I mean who sleeps in a bunk-bed past the age of 10?! Apparently…). It has to be a divan (more space for junk storage), and it needs a padded headboard; iron and wood are not comfortable enough for the endless hours of reading done by my bookworm.
• Ideally it will contain a swimming pool.
• And she needs some inspirational artwork.

 

There wasn’t much she was willing to give up though. The excessive amount of cuddly toys still need to live on her bed. Her desk stays – not because she creates immaculate homework there, but because, well – it’s somewhere to put stuff, isn’t it? She needs her iPig speakers, her make-up case, and her poster of Nacho Monreal (don’t ask). But that One Direction duvet cover – that has to go.

My Bespoke Room came to the rescue. Turns out I’m brilliant at getting excited about pink and girly rooms, but not so good at judging what my very particular tween would like. I needed advice, I needed inspiration, and I needed a third party to appeal to my daughter’s sense of what was practical.

How My Bespoke Room works

As soon as you visit the My Bespoke Room homepage you start to feel inspired. The owners, Laura and Diana, have put together a very stylish site, and I immediately fell in love with some of the rooms they’ve previously worked on and featured. GG loved the feel of it too, and was anxious to get started.

• All you do is click the “Get Started” button, to start filling in a few basic details about your home.
• As you go through the simple form, you have the opportunity to describe a little of your own style – are you minimalist, elegant, or traditional in your choices? What colours do you love/hate? Anything you’d definitely like to keep, or things you couldn’t stand in your room? The egg chair made it onto our list. I vetoed the swimming pool!
• Then you upload a few snaps of how your room looks now. I think Laura might have fainted when she saw the mess, but she very politely said “goodness, she does have a lot of stuff, doesn’t she?“
• Finally, you choose the budget for your room. We set ours at £1000, because we wanted to see a variety of suggestions, but you can choose less, or more, and the team will find items in your budget that will look great in your design.
• And that’s it! After about a week we received this in an email:

 

With an invitation like that I quite literally could not wait, so I did exactly as they advised and the two of us sipped from chilled glasses (only one contained wine) as we unveiled the transformation. First up was a mood board of colours and items – a snapshot of what her room could look like if we followed the plan. She loved it, so we dived into the detail.

 

 

Your board is divided into different aspects of what will go into your room: beds, soft furnishings, lighting, paint – everything you’ve asked for. Then, when you click on the individual sections, you’re given a recommendation for the item they suggest, and a list of options you can swap it for, should you prefer those.

You also get a floorplan showing the items they’ve suggested, in-situ in your room, as well as some design images of how various sections of your room would look with the furnishings in place. This was probably the most helpful part of all, as it really allowed us to see how the room could be changed to suit her needs as she is growing up. The bed has shifted completely, which I’d never have thought of. It separates her room into two sections – one for studying or getting dressed, and another, softer area for hanging out with her friends.

Then, if you’re ready to get started, you can click straight through to the suppliers of the items they’ve chosen for you and order them for direct delivery. But there’s no obligation at all. If you wanted to, you could use the My Bespoke Room service for inspiration only, and do all your own product research separately. For us it will be a mixture of the two, as we add in some items we’ve found locally, to those we like that they have sourced.

My only problem? I promised a room makeover to my daughter for her eleventh birthday, but now she’s seen this design she wants to get started straight away!

Prices for a room design start at £75, and there is no obligation beyond that. Our room design was provided free of charge, for the purposes of this review. All opinion and editorial is our own.