Kids room reveal.

Cutshop® recently worked with the first winners of TV’s DIY hit, The Block.  Alice and Caleb Pearson, now known as Pearson + Projects, wanted to create custom-cut beds for a shared bedroom for their adorable children, Alek and Mika.

Alice gives us the low-down...

Designing a kids’ room is always an adventure.  Creating spaces to play, learn and sleep (hopefully) that suit their individual personalities and style – without the room looking like the kids have designed it themselves!

We decided early on we wanted to create a shared bedroom plus a playroom, rather than one girl’s bedroom and one boy’s bedroom. As we renovated and designed there were a few things I focused on; adding storage solutions, creating defined areas in the rooms and adding details the kids would love.

This is a guest blog by Alice Pearson (Alice + Caleb Pearson, husband and wife duo, winners of The Block NZ 2013). Read the full blog here.

The first design decision was the feature wall – for me, colour is always a priority in any room. I chose ‘Pale Mustard’ from the Escapade Look range in the Dulux Colour Trends 2018.

Colour evokes emotion and, when you do yellow well, it represents freshness, happiness, positivity, clarity, energy, optimism, intellect, honour, loyalty and joy – who doesn’t want that for their children?

Putting the colour on the wall at the head of beds helps to avoid overstimulation. Rather than art work or decals, I decided to display soft animal heads in a cluster on the pale mustard wall.

From Little Whimsy’s Wild & Soft Animal Heads range I selected Cesar the Lion, George the Elephant and Daniel the Zebra. The kids adore their animal tribe watching over them as they sleep and it adds personality to the room.

Choosing the right bed, in my mind, is the most important element of designing a kids’ room. Having kids who sleep well and stay in their beds is a priority for our parenting.

Because it’s a shared room I wanted the beds to be identical, but provide Mika with a design that helped her transition from a cot. While a single bed is the most common option, I love toddler beds.

Some toddler beds are just a bed designed around a cot mattress. I prefer the IKEA sizing of 160cm x 70cm which is considered a junior bed. A junior bed size is a great size for kids from 2-6 years old and frees up more space in the room.

But how do you design a custom-sized bed? It’s made easy with Cutshop®

I created a sketch of the beds I wanted, included measurements and some examples from Pinterest of the look I was after - and sent it through to Cutshop® Mt Wellington. Within a day I received a quote of $327 for each bed.

Through email the programming team at Cutshop® got a full understanding of what I was after, the material I wanted and what system to use to fasten it together.

They sent a detailed plan of the bed design with all the measurements for me to approve, then within four days the beds were created and cut. I selected MDF so I could paint the bed, but I could have selected ply or pine wood instead.

I spray-painted the panels of the bed ‘Dusk Grey’ by White Knight and then Caleb put together the beds in the kids’ room. I finished off the bed by adding an Irregular Dots decal to the headboard.

These two rooms suit our lifestyle and create spaces that my kids love. I can sit at the dining table working or having a cup of tea and watch them play (or work through toy negotiations) in their playroom.

Mika has transitioned into her ‘little girl pink bed’ without any late-night tumbles. And, while it may have been a long two weeks to get them to do it, the kids can now happily fall asleep in their shared room and get out of bed in the morning without waking up their room-mate!