giggle Blogs

Let’s look at the other side of the coin. Last post, we looked at an OPULENT kid’s room, and here is something completely different. Which are you?

I came across this enchanting picture of a 1970’s nursery on the excellent Museum of Happiness blog.
I’ll have to take their word for it that this really is a room of thirty years ago, because it’s got everything going on in it that our little design revolution has been about–I mean, this is a look people are striving for now and would be absolutely convincing if you did it today. But I guess the lesson is…how quickly we forget!

Anyway, this is a cheerful little beauty and it shows how much you can accomplish with a few dexterous furniture moves and a gift for arranging objects. If Minimalism is for you when decorating a child’s room, this is what you want to end up with: to paraphrase Mies, an interesting plainness. The way to do it successfully is to remember it is harder to do this than a fancy room–you have to be disciplined about everything you put in there, and the rules of composition are much less forgiving.  Obvious first steps are white walls and a plain rug.

I think architecture is one of the most important components of minimalism, so it certainly helps if there is something there that can be celebrated by leaving it naked, like a floor-to-ceiling picture window looking out into verdant treetops. But even if we didn’t have that, if we were prisoners of the most miserable sheetrock box, there must be some move made to express the authority of plain architecture, be it real or invented. One good way is to make a single curtain which can be drawn to cover the whole wall, whatever the shape or size of the windows it hides; another might be to upholster or paint one wall in the room a slightly beige or gray color, deeper than the other white ones, to do for your room what this window does for this one.

Next you have to curate. You can’t just load up the joint with all the things you have been given, which could be a problem when your relatives come over (“Where’s the plush mobile I gave you?”)…You get three, or four, lovely pieces of furniture, three of which are plain plain plain and ONE  of which is interesting, even a little weird, and sets up a contrast with the rest. In this room, as will often turn out to be the case, it is the chair. I love this black Bertoia mesh thing in the middle of all this whiteness and airiness.
Chic. Notice also something very important: the shelves are not loaded with toys and detritus, they are curated, arranged, and kept looking good every day by somebody who knows how to line things up and space them expressively, and style the room…pretty much has to be the parent. Could that be…you?

This is the dark underbelly of Minimalism: maintenance.

It’s probably truer for a child’s room that any other room in the house, because of how hard it is to control what goes in there and stays. But Oh, if we could have a room like this one, wouldn’t it be worth it? Thank you Museum of Happiness for showing me this, made my day.