Painting / decorating nurseries & kid's rooms

[number572]

I'm curious if many people pay to have their nurseries or kid's rooms painted or otherwise professionally decorated (murals, wallpaper, etc). If any of you have, would you mind posting about it?

How much did you have done to the room/s... a basic paint or wallpaper job, then added the rest yourself... or did you get details added for you professionally. Also, how did you find the pro/contractor if you used one? Were/are you happy with the job... why/not?


(this probably needs to be in another forum, there were about three that it *could* go in & i wasn't sure, would a moderator help get it to where it belongs, please? thx)

[FreeThinkinMama]

In our last house we had the nursery painted light yellow while I was still pregnant. We did Precious Moments because it was neutral too.

This house, we didn't paint at all, we just used those removable stickers with Princess stuff on them and I re-decorated it with the Disney Princesses

We rent though, if we owned I would paint it lavender or pink and put up wallpaper borders

[MotherEden]

We cosleep, but I did decorate the playroom. I did it all myself. Painted green rolling hills and a blue sky with clouds. Then had the kids help me paint flowers and stuff. I like diy projects so it was fun for us. OTOH I have friends who have done diy decorating jobs that did not turn out the way they had hoped (imo)

[kathipaul]

I spent a long time several years ago painting the room that is now dd's, getting the 70 year old moulding to look good. After 70 years of paint, there are no right angles in this room anymore! It was a great color, cream with light green trim, for a little girl, so we left it and just decorated around it and a quilt my mom made for the baby. I am a pretty low key decorator anyway.

[lisap]

DD's room is painted light blue and DH put crown molding in there as well. I decorated it with bugs (not painted on the walls or anything). We also painted her bathroom a bright green and painted ladybugs and dragonflies on the walls. It's really very cute. DH painted the bathroom and my mom painted the bugs on the walls. We got a stencil and went for it. My sisters and I painted DD's room!

[number572]

a bump for more responses... thank you for yours so far

[marisa]

I don't really like how 'theme-y' and overly matching interior decorator rooms come out. I don't like it when valances, borders, and sheets all match. They usually charge around 15% of the total budget for the room, which means they encourage you to spend alot, and don't really have cost saving strategies in mind (such as encouraging you to purchase fabric that is $20-50 a yard). Muralists in our area usually start with $20 per square foot, and regular room painters are $20 an hour and up. I like a classic and natural look to a child's room. I think it's easy to do a nice looking room yourself.

I like light leafy green walls with a tobacco colored glaze, and cream trim. Dyed silk drapes, grapevine winded around the curtain rod. Nice wood bookshelves and dresser, maybe something from an antique store. Stained bamboo or reed woven baskets to hold toys, diapers, and other baby goods. Prints and posters of gentle vintage children's book illustrations; there is a great selection on allposters.com (think vintage nursery rhymes, fairies, or woodland scenes.) A nice, worn vintage quilt in muted colors hanging on one wall.

[PM]

I haven't had the chance to decorate a room for dd (and new baby) because we've moved around and rented. But here's the room I'm planning (hopefully dd won't be 15 by the time we can actually settle in a house): the color theme will be based on Russian fairy tales (black, bright blue, orange, red, yellow); here in Kyrgyzstan I've just ordered two patchwork quilts in these colors but with Kyrgyz embroideries -- to tie in the two cultures (the quilters belong to a local project that I'm very excited to contribute my money to); I plan on having someone (hopefully a student) design the wallpaper with scenes from Russian fairy tales; floors will be hardwood; furniture will be flea market finds (hopefully I can find iron beds).

[thistle]

We did dd's room a couple of weekends ago. it sounds alot liek Mothereden's kids' room.

Here's a link to some pics. The pics aren't the greatest b/c I took the pics on my pda, but you can get the gist. The colors are bolder IRL.

http://photos.yahoo.com/hochmut