Light and bright upstairs loft reveal with reading nook

From the day we moved into our home, we wanted to convert one of the bedrooms upstairs to a loft.

The upstairs had a narrow hallway that was very dark and we didn’t need four walls in this particular space.

The loft would serve as a place for our children’s toys, every plastic item known to man, and a place for them to play and us to hang out together as a family.

Here’s what the hallway looked like before we (and by we, of course I mean Daniel, I was busy decorating the room!)removed the walls:

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And here’s what it looks like today, after we removed nearly two walls (one full wall and one partial wall) and extended the stair railing another 10 feet.

I designed the room around the fact that they would use this space as they grow, and didn’t want it to be overly “little kid” in the color scheme, as I don’t plan to repaint or redesign the room anytime soon!

Honestly though, who am I kidding?! I’ll get the itch to repaint soon, I’m sure…

We went with Newburg Green by Benjamin Moore, which is a rich, blue-green hue. It tends to read more blue than green, but I loved playing up both colors with the decor I chose.

I love sampling paint colors by using the large peel and stick paint samples that I place directly onto a pure white poster board (so that I can actually see the paint color for what it is). I also thought of using Van Deusen Blue, but ultimately, I really loved the blue/green combo here and I wanted to echo that combo of colors in my decor.

By the way, if you want some color inspiration, I have over 100 paint color reviews you can browse.

Board and batten was carried around the entire room, which was a ton of work (again, this was a ton of work for Daniel, let’s be clear. But I did watch the children all day by myself on the days he did this, so you might say that was work for me…), but so worth it given how beautiful it makes the room look!

Because the shot above shows off this beautiful carpet, I want to talk about it for a second–

I hate carpet. Hate it.

However, I also have two small kids and it’s just more comfortable having carpet in the living spaces.

Yes, you can always add rugs to hardwood, and that’s what we do downstairs, but in this season of our lives, I’m team carpet for practical reasons.

I fell in love with this carpet from Shaw. Nothing was gifted to us and this isn’t even an affiliate link, just my unbiased love for this carpet that looks like a beautiful jute rug.

You can’t ever see dirt in the carpet, either (which is a little dangerous because sometimes I just “forget” to vacuum).

It wipes up well. We’ve already survived two stomach bugs with this carpet, mind you one of those incidents was the very day the carpet was installed.

A mere 2 hours passed with pristine carpet before my 2 year old decided she needed to christen it with the partially digested contents of her stomach.

Anyway, if you don’t like carpet, give this look a try before you dismiss the whole idea.

I fell in love with the artwork above the board and batten for two reasons, their frames were absolutely beautiful and had this antique vibe I was going for, and two, the artwork itself was gorgeous!

The day bed is in the play room for now as a space to relax, but it will soon go in to my daughter’s room when she transitions out of her crib.

I’ll likely replace it with some oversized bean bag chairs.

The wall sconces are very inexpensive but look very high end and absolutely complete the space. This room was originally wired with no overhead light, so we added wall sconces, a light by the reading nook and then there are two hallway lights.

We had an odd space in the corner of the room, and so the idea of creating a reading nook was decided on.

Originally, I thought we needed floor-to-ceiling storage for toys, but after maximizing space in the girls’ closets, we really didn’t need quite that much space.

We landed on three very long pull out drawers for toy storage and upper cabinet storage for games and other toys.

Because you can never have too many angles of functional storage that is just beautiful, here’s another shot of the space:

The reading nook was made even comfier when I purchased custom-cut foam, and I had a local seamstress cover it with fabric (sourced locally) to match the room color scheme.

We added comfy and colorful pillows and a cute light to finish off the space.

I have a playroom organization and storage hacks post if you want to check out more ideas on how we store our kids’ toys.

SOURCES: Green and white table | Crayon organizer

This sweet, little white table with green chairs went perfectly with the decor and is a great place to color and create.

The table wipes down really easily with magic eraser, which is a huge plus for me, because the girls always end up coloring on it!

Side note: Lest you feel guilt about how your playroom looks, the playroom will never look this clean again. It took at least one hour to get it to this point that you see…

Here’s a view of how we finished off the stairs after we removed most of the wall. I love how it turned out!

There is so much light filling the upstairs now and the girls have a great space to play in, complete with tons of storage–we love it!

As always, this project took way more time than we originally thought (doing this much board and batten is time consuming, y’all!) and, of course, cost more than we originally thought.

Daniel demoed the space in early March, and it was the end of May before it was done, working exclusively on weekends.

We so appreciate you reading!