Modern Cottage Style Boy's Bedroom Design - Making it in the Mountains

Sharing the design plans for Carson’s modern cottage style boy’s bedroom.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that our first renovation project of 2021 would be creating a brand new bedroom space for our not so little man. We’d actually been talking about re-doing his bedroom for a while now – it was the very first space we renovated when we moved into this house six years ago (you can read more about that here). Sure, we’d made a few changes in the years since, mainly those bold green walls and some new bedding, but after 6 years, Carson and I were both feeling the itch to re-vamp this space.

We’d been throwing out ideas to each other for months – different paint colour ideas, fabric options to recover the existing headboard (a DIY project that’s served us very well), maybe even a built in desk? But, aside from purchasing a couple of new bedside tables from IKEA, we hadn’t really gotten much further than tossing around the many ideas floating through our heads.

Finally finishing the basement just before Christmas has changed everything though. Adding that extra living space to our home has created a domino effect of change around our house, as we shift rooms and spaces all over the house. It’s a bit of a long story really, but if you’re interested about our plans to relocate nearly every space in our house, you can read more about them here. One of those spaces just happens to be Carson’s current bedroom, which we’ll be turning into a bunkbed room with two sets of bunkbeds (it’s the biggest bedroom aside from ours, so a very necessary move to make space for all those extra beds). Figuring out just where we’d like everything to end up through this big game of musical rooms around the house has actually been super fun and of course, it’s given us a lot of opportunity to dream up all sorts of projects to come! As you know, we’ve decided to start with Carson’s new bedroom space and I’m so excited to share our plans for it with you today!

I mentioned in this post that we were going to be doing things a little differently this time around. It’s really important that Carson gets to be a part of creating this new space, after all it’s the only room in the house that is totally, 100% his. I want it to mirror his friendly, charming & goofy personality, creating a cozy, welcoming space with loads of charm and character. We’ll also need to include some “fancy”, old world elements to reflect his own elegant, old soul. Obviously, putting together a mood board and visualizing what things might look like or how they might come together can only go so far with an 8 year old (I mean this is a hard process for most grown-ups!). So, instead of planning it all out before we got started, we’ve sort of just been figuring it out as we go and I have to say, it’s been SO much fun to work out each design decision with Carson as we go, just sort of going with the flow of it all.

So far, we’ve added some panelling to the walls (you can see all of the options we considered here), purchased a new bed (find our favourites here), and ordered up some new wall lamps (Carson loved how “old and fancy” these ones looked in the brass finish, you can see all of the options we considered here). I think now that we’ve got most of the big stuff all figured out, I can finally put it all together in a mood board for the space. As much as we’ve sort of been flying by the seat of our pants with this one, it’s also so important to consider how each element will work together to really create the look and feel we’re hoping for – collecting each piece of the puzzle and pulling it together with a mood board is such a great way to see how each different element works together. Today, I’m so excited to finally have some of the bigger picture design plans, including a mood board, to share!

Modern Cottage Style Boy’s Bedroom Design Plans

As I mentioned, our first step was adding some vertical shiplap wainscoting all around the room. We plan to paint it all out in this beautiful green colour, including all of the doors and trim work throughout the space and then, we’re gong to paint the top half of the wall as well as the ceiling in my favourite warm white. We’ll be keeping Carson’s current dresser and bookshelf (we had them custom made for his nursery and they have a ton of sentimental value to me), but we’ll be replacing his bed and night tables. We’re also planning on keeping his bedding as it’s really great quality and I still really love the pattern and colours, but I’m hoping to bring in more colour and texture through some wool throw pillows and maybe a quilt for the end of his bed. Carson’s super excited about his fancy new wall lamps and I think the wall mount and swing arm will both be really practical features for bedtime stories. We still have a few details to work out, mainly the accessories I guess, but those are always more fun to collect along the journey I think! We also have plans to create a built in closet organizer, maybe a little built in desk and I’d love to figure out some new closet doors (something with a built in cabinet look I think), but we need to get this bedroom space all finished up first.

I think Carson and I have come up with a really fun design plan together, something that we’ll both love for years to come! We’re both so excited to see how it all comes together! I’m hoping to get all of the patching and caulking done over the next couple of days (there is A LOT of patching and caulking to do in here!) and then hopefully this weekend, it’ll be ready for some paint! Wish me luck!