Our Modern Kids Room Design – Ideas & Makeover

Time to upgrade your toddler’s to a big boy room or just give your kid’s room an update?! Well, we recently updated our guest room to create a modern kid’s bedroom and wanted to share our kids room design and ideas with you. We’ll show you the before and after, what we DIY-ed, each designed area, and provide a source list for everything at the end.

Updated 3/23/2024

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The time finally came where our toddler outgrew his converted crib and was ready for an upgrade. As a parent, it’s a little heart-wrenching to see how quickly kids grow up. But being a designer, I quickly got excited about the thought of doing a kid bedroom makeover!

We knew we wanted to flip our guest room into our little one’s “big boy” room. Moreover, we also knew we wanted the room design to feel modern and timeless, so it would grow with our child. Honestly, I’m a little jealous of some design elements in this toddler’s bedroom, and we might have to do some design updates to our master bedroom as well!

So check out our modern kids room design makeover and ideas!

Modern Kids Room Design

Before

After

Okay, so some people will see this bedroom design and probably say “umm this doesn’t look like a kid’s typical bedroom”. Well, yes it doesn’t, but that’s exactly what we wanted! 

The bedroom design is meant to create a well-designed foundation for him. The wall art, toys, books, and stuffed animals will change out over time as he grows up and can put his own touch on it. But the large furniture and shelving is meant to grow with our little one until he’s fully grown. So the bedroom design is very natural and simple for this reason and doesn’t evoke a typical kid’s bedroom.

Statement DIY Canopy Bed

So the biggest piece in the toddler room is obviously the giant canopy bed. We’re pretty proud to say we designed it and built it ourselves! Clean and simple lines with a hint of Japanese inspired joinery was the design inspiration for this canopy bed. 

It is also designed as a platform bed. This works great for toddlers and kids as it’s low enough to the ground they can still climb in and out. It also means it is not any further to fall from than a typical toddler bed.

The canopy bed is a queen sized bed. We didn’t want to be wasteful by buying another smaller mattress for a toddler who will only be a toddler for a short while. So we used the queen mattress from our old guest bed for this canopy bed. The bedding set and adorable stuffed animals are from Target. 

By the way, this canopy bed is very neutral and not only for children. It can totally be a canopy bed for a master bedroom or guest room!

Check out our Hubby How To on how to build your own DIY Canopy Bed. Pssst, you can get the build plans in our Shop or our Etsy Shop, if you’re interested! There are drawing plans for all the standard bed sizes, so you don’t have to be looking only for a queen sized bed.

Kid’s Reading Nook: Accent Wall

Paint can do amazing things. For example, we were inspired by many of the beautiful arches and circles painted on walls that are popular right now. However, we took it a step further by painting out a box on the ceiling too! The two walls and ceiling frame and create the illusion of a space within the larger bedroom. Perfect for creating a little reading nook. We used a quart of Behr’s Outdoor Oasis as it matched the bedding color perfectly.

Every kid’s room design needs some form of “storage” for toys and books. We go for a more Montessori approach where everything is open and visible. Also, this way our child always knows what’s available and can make a choice on what to play with without dumping a whole toy bin and making a mess. 

Simple floating shelves stained to match the canopy bed seemed perfect. To play up the modern and natural design of the room, we overlapped the shelving into the accent corner to add some more dimension and dynamics.

After the shelves, add some toys, books, stuffed animals, and comfy seating to complete the reading nook. We stained an Ikea Poang chair to match the other wood tones in the room. The original natural wood color is beautiful, but we love the dark wood tones and wanted it to match the canopy bed and shelves.

Some of our little one’s favorite toys and books are on this shelf and easy to access.

• Favorite Books – Baby Loves Green Energy , Baby Loves Coding (from the Science Box Set), Climate Change for Babies, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Set, Not a Box
• Favorite Toys – Fat Brain Train Set, Kiwi Co. Wooden Toys, Wooden Musical Instrument Set, Fat Brain Wooden Blocks, Kinderfeets Bamboo 2-1 Adjustable Balance Bike

There’s a stool from our Ikea sensory table that appears in this modern toddler room often as our little one has found it useful to reach items on the second shelf. Our little one can’t reach the top shelf yet, but it won’t be long until he can!

Sunburst Design Closet

This DIY project all started with a wife uttering the words “I have a crazy idea…crazy…but awesome.” That’s definitely when I got the uh-oh look from my husband.

Bi-folding closet doors have always been a little boring and take up quite a bit of wall space in a room. So my designer brain said the closet doors needed to become something more and a piece of art. Thus, the crazy sunburst design came to life.

We’ve always had an affinity for sun type designs because of our love of the Disney movie, Tangled. There’s a beautiful sun design in that movie, and my hubby proposed to me using this theme. Plus, the sunburst design sort of looks like a lion’s mane if you add eyes. My son’s name is Leon meaning “lion” in Italian, so little design things like that bring me extra joy.

Thank goodness for my engineering brained hubby who did all the math and measurements to lay this sunburst out. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure it would have been lopsided or unequal in some way. 

I’m pretty sure both myself and Tyler disliked most of the process of creating this sunburst closet. There was a lot of measuring, cutting every strip at EVERY closet bend, and way too much hand sanding even for us DIY-ers. 

But oh it turned out beautiful and will never be removed as long as we own this house! I recommend doing a simpler design if you want to replicate this closet design idea. We’ll probably do this on a bedroom door next, so we don’t have to deal with the closet bending and a much simpler pattern.

Engagement Wall

Beside the sunburst closet, we created a little interactive wall for the room that our child could engage with. 

The first element was a simple circular mirror hung at his eye level. This allows him to look at himself when in the room, and we found it important to help him with self-recognition. Additionally, he uses the mirror when he’s getting dressed looking at the clothes he chose and put on. Our child LOVES it and sings or talks to himself in the mirror often!

The next element is a photo and art display. It’s simple wood strips like the sunburst closet, stained, and attached to the wall. Then we added a few black metal clips to use to attach art and photos. The idea behind this is it would be like how many people use their fridges to display their kid’s art creations. But instead, it’s in the child’s room at their level for them to engage with. Also, it clears up your fridge and can rotate out art pieces often!

Lastly, a learning component was added. We found this adorable, modern embroidered alphabet canvas that was a perfect fit for this interactive wall display. They have a number canvases as well. At the moment, it’s all about learning letter recognition and sounds, but I’m sure in the future the canvas will be a teaching element to practice spelling or something!

Again, it’s key to hang items at a child’s height in their bedroom, so they can actually engage with them. Think of the child’s view and their perspective of the room. It would feel really odd if everything was hung a couple of feet above your head!

Well there’s a quick tour of the room design and the reasons behind our decisions. Check out our source list below for everything in this modern kids room design.

Kid Room Design Source List

• DIY Canopy Bed Plans: Our Site Shop or Etsy Shop
• Reading Nook Paint Color – Behr Outdoor Oasis
• Green Quilt Comforter: Pillowfort @ Target
• Queen-sized Bamboo Jersey Waterproof Mattress Protector (necessity with potty-training kids)
• Toddler Camera: Zmodo Mini Pro
• Night Light and Sound Machine: Hatch Baby Rest (great for toddler sleep/wake up alarm)
• Star String Lights
• Reading Chair: Ikea Poang Chair or on Amazon
• Leaf Pillow
• Hanging Alphabet or Number Canvas on Etsy or Amazon
• Hanging Round Mirror
• Wooden Picture Frames (FYI, come individually wrapped in plastic, but I loved them…)
• Black Picture Clips: Coideal Small Bull Clips
• Curtains
• 1-inch Curtain Rods
• Favorite Toys
  • Most of the Wooden Toys: Kiwi Co Subscription Boxes
• • Wooden Musical Instrument Set
• • Wooden Blocks: Fat Brain
  • Bamboo 2-1 Adjustable Balance Bike: Kinderfeets
  • Giant Stuffed Dinosaur: Animal Adventure @Target
  • Giant Stuffed Giraffe: Animal Adventure @Target
• Favorite Books
  • Baby Loves Green Energy
  • Baby Loves Coding (from the Science Box Set)
  • Climate Change for Babies
  • Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Set
  • Not a Box
• Extra throw pillows from another bedding set
• Crocheted Totoros: Handmade by my Mom (I will forever love and nerd out about these!)

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Hope you loved our little tour and reveal of this modern kids room design and ideas we did for our child! Let us know what you think in the comments and feel free to share!

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