Before and After: A Boring Basement Bedroom Becomes a Tween-age Dream with a DIY Ombre Wall
If you’re a parent of multiple children, or if you grew up with siblings, you’ll know that rooming with a brother or sister can things can quickly go sour as people get older and the space seemingly becomes smaller. There are (literal) growing pains.
Interior designer Ashley Izsak’s twin daughters used to share a room, but eventually, the tween girls were begging for their own rooms, and with a third kiddo on the way, as sentimental as it made Ashley feel splitting up the twins, it was finally time to shift things around.
Ashley’s daughter Isla got this room in the basement, which was mostly gray with ceiling tiles rather than a drywall ceiling. “We had never painted or replaced the carpet,” Ashley says of the space. “In contrast, the before room that Isla shared with her twin sister was lovely.”
Ashley, with the help of her husband and Isla, decided to tackle this room and make it lovely, too, during the Spring 2022 One Room Challenge. “The initial drywalling of the ceiling and replacing of the floors were done by my husband, Andrew,” Ashley says.
Then, she and Isla created the pink ombre wall. First, they gave all of the walls base coat of white (Farrow & Ball’s Wevet). They selected a bright pink (Nancy’s Blushes) and a pale pink (Middleton Pink) and then they drew lines on the wall where they wanted the colors to fade into one another.
The first line was 18 inches above the baseboard, the second line was four inches above that, and the last one was 18 inches above that. They painted the baseboards and lower 18-inch section with the most intense pink, the upper 18-inch section with the pale pink, and they used the middle four inches to blend the two by mixing the two paint colors and a wet brush. They did the same wet brush and paint mixture technique to mix the lightest pink with the white wall color. And voila! A beautiful ombre wall, not to mention one that her daughter had a hand in creating.
“Get your child involved in the design phase,” Ashley advises. “I didn’t want to be one of those designer moms who forced a ‘too grown up’ design onto my child. I really wanted her to love it.”
The longest of the transformation was waiting for the furniture to come in, Ashley recalls. Andrew built the arch-shaped shelving, and below that is an IKEA desk flanked by two tall wardrobes for clothing storage. They purchased a new bed and bedding, switched out the light fixture, bought a new Rifle Paper Co. rug, and added new artwork in the space. Their renovation total was about $8,000.
Ashley (and Isla!) are thrilled with the result. “There is nothing we would have done differently,” Ashley says. “I love that Isla loves the space as that was the most important element.” A happy mom and daughter for the win!
This project was completed for the Spring 2022 One Room Challenge, in partnership with Apartment Therapy. See even more of the One Room Challenge before and afters here.
Inspired? Submit your own project here.