This Bedroom Makeover Has a Bold IKEA HEMNES Hack (It’s Coated in Color!)
Often, ultra-colorful homes don’t start out fully saturated in bold paint colors. It’s more likely they came with a neutral, builder-grade palette, and some intrepid, color-loving DIYer grabbed a roller and got started color-fying the spaces.
When DIYer Rian Westdorp (@offthepinkwalls) moved into her Amsterdam apartment, it was a total blank slate. “[Before I moved in], all the walls were white, whether painted or tiled,” Rian says. “I wanted this home to really be a place that I enjoyed and felt like me, forgetting about trends or what other people think.”
Luckily, with some clever DIYs, her home went from a plain white space to an eye-catching pink dream house — and that includes her stunning bedroom.
It’s all in the (pink) paint selection.
Rather than drawing from current trends or one specific design style, Rian chose her bedroom and overall apartment’s central motif based on her favorite color. For her — as well as her 6-year-old niece — the answer is pink.
“My aim was to create an all-pink apartment that’s also modern,” she says. “To achieve that kind of look, I combined the pink with green, gold, and black accents.”
For her bedroom, Rian used the Dutch paint brand Histor’s Rabunctious Rhubarb shade for her walls, and Histor’s “Paris Pink” for her custom-made wardrobe.
The bedroom makeover includes an IKEA HEMNES hack.
Rian’s proudest bedroom DIY? Her customized IKEA Hemnes dresser. “For a while, I had been looking for a nice cabinet with drawers for some of my clothes, but I couldn’t find anything that I liked or that was pink,” she says on Instagram. She saw this IKEA hack idea in a beige color and decided to give it her own pink spin.
To create the new look, she sawed about 120 (if not more!) wooden half-dowels by hand, added them to the drawer fronts with wood glue, and sanded the tops and bottoms of the dowels so they were all even. Next, using a small roller for the body of the HEMNES and a hand brush for the dowels, she painted the entire piece pink. She finished with new brass handles “to make it look more chic.”
Every detail in the bedroom matters — and Rian is a big fan of the “after,” as is her family!
“My niece loves the place, too, and comes over often to experience all the pink,” she says. “The idea I had in my mind was to make a 1920s boutique pink hotel kind of vibe, and while it might not be perfect, I think I got quite close!”
Inspired? Submit your own project here.