Creating your own workspace at home
Lifestyle

How I transformed our nursery into our home office

Transforming our nursery into our home office happened at exactly the right time, before we knew that lockdown was about to happen and that my husband would be working from home. He’s now back at work and the space is mine again, hooray!

A month before the world went mad we made the decision to move my son into my daughter’s bedroom in hope that they would both sleep better. I think it’s working. However this post isn’t about sleep (I could go on but I won’t). Instead it’s about how I made our box room (which is 1.95m wide x 2.7m long) a stylish working space on very little budget, costing no more than a tin of paint and a roll of yellow painters tape, and my time.

I must add that we fully decorated this room when we moved in just over two years ago which included having coving installed, the walls painted, the woodwork tidied up (it was brown when we moved in) and a new carpet lain to create the nursery, so this transformation was only a small update but has completely changed the space.

The nursery in our house.

So here’s what I did to create our home office as it is today. If you follow my Instagram you will see that we have a lot of black tones running through the house that stem from the colour of the units in the kitchen. Farrow and Ball Off Black is one of my core colours as part of our house colour palette. In our bathroom it’s the wall colour above the tiles, and I wanted to create the ‘flip reverse’ of this in the office as it sits opposite the bathroom on the landing. To do this it was as simple as colour blocking the lower part of the walls in Farrow and Ball Off Block which took about 4 hours to do in total, including time to go and buy the tin of paint.

The key to colour blocking the walls is the prep and as I was painting such a dark colour on top of a light colour the prep was vital as any slight error will look really odd. I probably should have used a measuring laser to do this, but instead I used good old fashioned tape measure and a pencil to work out where to place the painters tape. I used the yellow frog tape which is slightly less tacky than the others and available from all good DIY stores.

The other little bit of detail that I had to take into account was the existing colour blocking in the kids bedroom as the new office colour blocking had to be at the same height to avoid it looking odd when both doors were open. I also had to consider that should we ever take it up the stairs it would need to be same height as where the original dado rail would have been as you can see it underneath the plaster. Lots to consider.

I think I spent more time taping up the room to the height of 92cm above the skirting board than I did painting it. But it has taught me that prep and the boring part is actually the most vital part, and is totally worth it.

Taping up the walls ready for colour blocking

The first coat of Farrow and Ball Off Black being applied to the walls.

The skirting boards, window boards and plug sockets were all taped up too, and then I got painting. It only needed two coats, which was plenty to cover the light colour underneath. The painters tape came off as soon as the second coat was painted, when the paint was still wet. This creates the crisp line. If you take the tape off when the paint is dry you risk taking the paint off. That’s another top tip for you, take the tape off as soon as you have applied the last coat.

The finished home office space with colour blocked walls.

Another angle of home office

Another angle of our home office

Another angle of our home office

With colour blocking there are always small touch ups to be made, and I’ve done this using one of Freya’s paint brushes. There’s another tip, use a child’s paintbrush for those small touch ups.

So that’s it that’s how I renovated our nursery into an office space. All the furniture that is in the room was already existing. My desk and pink chair was in the spare room, the IKEA Kallax was used as nursery furniture, and the sofa bed was in Freya’s room in this house and in our previous property.

I’ve styled the wall above the desk with a typographical print of Crofton Park and a copper wire peg board.

There are still a few updates to be made to further style the space including adding some more pictures and swapping the plug sockets and light switches for something a little more stylish.

That’s it, the transformation as really simple and it has completely transformed and changed the room. Would you be tempted to do something similar to update a room?

The details

Top wall colour – Dulux Polished Pebble

Bottom wall colour – Farrow and Ball Off Black, this is a colour matched Johnstones trade paint

Desk – Mickey from Swoon

Chair – Maison du Monde

Bookcase – White IKEA Kallax and Black IKEA Drona Boxes

Cushions – IKEA Johanne

Grey black-out blind – Blinds 2 go

Claire x

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