Bohemian Equestrian Shared Girls Room

Well, it has been 2 months since my daughters started sharing a room and it is still going smoothly! We moved them together in prep for the new baby coming in April.

Originally, I told myself I wasn’t going to change anything in the room once we moved them together since I just painted it and styled it last year for my oldest daughter. (See her room reveal here) But as soon as the intense nesting vibes hit I couldn’t really help myself. I was in full redesign mode! I DID ease back from my original plans though. I had planned to paint white over the coral and do a feature wall in a fun wallpaper, but I decided to keep the coral paint. We all LOVE it too much to paint over it! I honestly thought we’d be tired of it by now, but it’s such a fun and happy room to enter and we just can’t get enough of it. Even my husband is on team pink! (Or “team Coral” at least. 😉 )

So, working with keeping this pop of color, I moved forward in my design. I knew I wanted to tone everything else back a bit since adding another bed would make the room very full. We opted for two matching twin beds instead of bunk beds because the bunk bed situation just gave me too much anxiety with how small my kids are. (I did look for a bunk bed with stairs instead of a ladder but any I found were beyond our budget.) After searching for more inspiration photos though I just fell in love with the look of two twin beds beside each other. I chose all white bedding and then added in some visual texture in the throws, pillows, and art.

I wanted the details to be something that both girls would agree on, and they have fallen head-over-boots IN LOVE with horses over the past year, (and I’ve heard once the “pony-bug” bites you there’s no cure, so I figured I may as well embrace it. 🙂 ) I used that inspiration to add in a few Equestrian touches to their room.

Here’s my inspiration mood board.

I wanted the room to feel girly and fun but still be modern enough that it could evolve with them for as long as we live in this house. This is our first home so I know soon we’ll need to upgrade but, we will probably be here for a few more years at least.

Here is a before picture from when it was just my oldest daughter’s room. Still so fun and colorful but not functional for two girls to share.

And here is the newly refreshed space that both girls can enjoy!

We are obsessed with the way it looks now! The symmetry of the beds and the equestrian elements just enhance the paint color and make the whole room such a happy place to be!

The twin beds are the IKEA MINNEN beds. I love the modern but classic design of them. The nightstand was from the set that came with the dresser I had in here previously. The pair to it is in my closet currently with extra clothes in it, I parted with the dresser but the nightstands are still being made use of so I’m not parting with them yet. The warm wood adds a nice organic layer to their room too. The bedding is the OFELIA VASS duvet from IKEA. The throw pillows are the TIJII pillow from Structube (which appears to be sold out now but here is a similar one.) and the throws are the ROGGO throw from Structube as well. The rainbow pillow was a last minute addition I found while ordering a laundry hamper from H&M. My oldest daughter is OBSESSED with rainbows right now so I thought she’d appreciate it. (She probably thanked me for buying it about 30 times that day!) The colors on the pillow also coordinated perfectly with the rest of the room so I’m pretty sure it was meant to be!

The horse photographs were taken by my husband of “my daughter’s horses”. I say that in parentheses because they are technically my Mother-in-laws’ horses but the girls have claimed them as their own. 🙂 Originally I was going to print the horse pictures in black and white but I felt it took away from the personality of each horse and I wanted their hair color and distinct features to show clearly.

The wall space in between the pictures felt a bit off at first, so I tried a few different things here until I decided on these hats. I found a couple of hats at Goodwill and then my mother-in-law found a couple more for me. They are bohemian and equestrian and just add a fun layer of texture to the wall. The arrangement of the hats took a few weeks to decide on, my husband had strong opinions about how it should look, and I was just ready to be done with this room, but thankfully his design eye helped me come to the final arrangement. (We tried them spaced apart, then in a circle and few other layouts before coming to this one.) He usually lets me just do my design thing but sometimes he has strong opinions about certain details. It’s always for the best though and it pushes me to stretch and grow and work on the details until they are just right. 🙂

I refreshed their gallery wall by spray painting a bunch of the frames white to give the whole arrangement a cleaner aesthetic (I had about 5 different colors of frames before). Then I changed out most of the pictures to fit with the overall aesthetic of the room. All pictures except the cactus prints were made by me or my husband. The cactus pictures are from a photography site called Unsplash. There are so many beautiful prints there for free, donated by amazing photographers!

Another simple but, HUGE upgrade to the room was organizing the closet with the IKEA ALGOT system. Builder grade closets are always so useless for storing children’s clothes, there’s usually just a hanging rod when most of their clothes can’t really be hung anyways. They need drawers and lots of them in my opinion. Their closet is only 4′ wide and 2′ deep but now it can fit all their clothes and there is still room to spare on the shelf above! (We’re still working on teaching them to fold clothes first, but hey at least they are IN the drawers!)

I was able to keep this room refresh really affordable too. I sold the previous vintage dresser we had in here and that paid for the new bed/mattress and some of the bedding. I also found a few other unused furniture items to sell so that I could purchase the closet organizers and other textiles in the room. Our home is comfortable but still on the smaller size so I try not to hold onto anything that we don’t currently have a place for in our home. I try to do most of my room refreshes this way, if I don’t love it anymore I sell it and upgrade for what I want/need in the space currently.

I moved their books to a small basket in their play tent. It makes it much easier to clean up the books than the shelf we had previously. The sister dolls were a gift from my husband’s step-dad.

Thanks so much for reading! I’m so happy with how this room turned out and my girls are over the moon about their new “cowgirl room” as they’re calling it!

I was so nervous about them sharing a room, but, it’s been so fun and, they are bonding so much as sisters. 🙂 Happy babies, Happy Mama!

Would you try a bold color like this?! I’d love to help you choose if you’re considering it!