Upcycled Bedroom Furniture for Kids
Vibrant and creative, children’s bedrooms are the perfect place to experiment with colour. From calm sleeping environments to inspiring play areas, there are plenty of spaces to incorporate colour. Refreshing a piece of furniture is the perfect way to update an existing scheme.
All Little Greene paint colours have child safe certification, which ensures that they are free from toxic ingredients. Choose from wipeable Intelligent Matt Emulsion for walls, supremely resilient Intelligent Satin, or Intelligent Eggshell for woodwork. All of these finishes carry the European Standard for Toy Paint (EN 71-3:2019).
Discover expert guidance below for choosing colours and applying child-safe paint to children’s bedroom furniture.
Choosing Colours for Children’s Bedroom Furniture
When selecting shades for a children’s room, consider how you would like the space to feel. Also, think about the light in the room and how it affects the space. A shaded area might benefit from a pop of brightly painted furniture to lift the space. Whereas, a brightly daylit area could take a darker shade of saturated colour on an item of painted children’s furniture such as a toy storage box.
You may also want to consider choosing colours that are soft and gentle for children with additional sensory needs, to create a sense of calm within the room.
Wall: Shirting
Stripes: Bone China Blue
Skirting: Middle Buff
Shelf Bars: Baked Cherry, Woad, Heat & Bone China Blue
Order a complimentary colour card to begin your upcycled furniture project.
Start Small: Child-sized Furniture Upcycling Projects
If you’re painting furniture for the first time, begin with a smaller project. A chair, toy box, or a rocking horse is an ideal project that you can complete in a day.
How to upcycle varnished furniture:
- Use a medium grade sandpaper lightly over any existing finish to provide a key to the new coats of paint. This will also remove any flaking paint.
- Wipe over with a damp cloth to remove dust and dirt. If greasy, use a sugar soap to clean and allow to dry.
- Choose Intelligent Satin as the best paint for upcycling furniture and paint 2 full coats. This allows 2-3 hours of drying time in between. If your chair includes metal parts, this paint finish is ideal for painting both wood and metal surfaces.
- Be methodical. It is quite easy to miss a surface on a 3D object. Start from the top down and move around the piece of furniture to check you haven’t missed anything.
- Use the paint sparingly and don’t overload your brush.
- Wash your paint brushes thoroughly in water.
- Enjoy your upcycled painted bedroom furniture!
Walls: James
Woodwork: Gauze
Rocking horse: Felt & Slaked Lime Deep
Skittles: Milk Thistle, Deep Space Blue, Marigold, Spearmint, Phthalo Green, Leather
Creative Cohesion: Paint Woodwork to Match your Upcycled Furniture
Once you have painted a piece of furniture, find another element in the room to paint the same colour. It could be the skirting boards, the picture rail, window frame or door. Doing this will create a visual link between the walls and the furniture and will draw the scheme together.
Wall (main): Welcome, Welcome – Pale, Pale Lupin
Skirting: Yellow-Pink
Chair: Mister David
Discover more inspiration & expert guidance for painting interior woodwork.
Cupboard Love: Painted Children’s Furniture Inspiration
This joyful chest of drawers painted in Marigold lifts this neutral scheme and provides a bold and colourful storage space. . Remove the drawers to paint and decide if you would like the drawer handles in the same colour or a contrasting hue. For an energetic scheme, look to colours on the opposite side of the colour wheel.
Marigold pairs extremely well with the cool Bone China Blue – Pale on the walls and floor. Introduce Bone China Blue to create stripes on the floor.
Drawers: Marigold
Stool: Chocolate Colour
Walls: Bone China Blue – Pale
Building blocks: Marigold & Carmine
Flooring: Bone China Blue & Bone China Blue – Pale
Read our step-by-step guide to painting wooden furniture in any room in the home.
Sleepy Head: Upcycled Wooden Headboards
Keeping your child’s room relevant to their age doesn’t always require a complete revamp of the room. Small projects can have real impact and introducing a painted headboard is a simple and effective statement.
To create this checkerboard look, paint small squares of wood in Intelligent Eggshell. Select contrasting colours Olive Colour, Carmine, Citrine, Lemon Tree, Pink Slip and Loft White.
Wall: Hellebore
Headboard: Olive Colour, Carmine, Citrine, Lemon Tree, Pink Slip & Loft White
Quick Fix: Painting Behind Your Children’s Furniture
To give the illusion of painted furniture, paint a wall behind a space saving shelving system in a vibrant colour. This will provide a backdrop to your child’s treasures and is a subtle way to zone areas of a room.
Use Phthalo Green for a vibrant finish alongside French Grey shelves. Use the very matt Absolute Matt Emulsion for low traffic areas, or Intelligent Matt if the wall is in a play space and will need wiping.
Walls and back of shelves: Phthalo Green
Back of shelves: Lawnmower Green
Shelves: French Grey
Learn more about our child-safe paints. Or browse our children's room inspiration gallery before embarking on your furniture upcycling project.
