Our bedroom used to be a living room, so it took a bit of work to turn it into a comfortable, functional and beautiful sleeping space (it’s truly one of our favorite rooms!). So today we’re bringing you 6 of the most impressive improvements we’ve made to our bedroom, along with some updated pictures.
Our bedroom, before
You can check all previous photos of our home here, but as you can see below, it was mostly a blank canvas. Well, except for the dilapidated drywall, crooked shutters and wide entrances to the adjacent kitchen – we had to solve all of that. But we loved the fireplace and the wall of French doors and knew almost immediately that it would be an amazing bedroom (since the house was only listed as having one bedroom when we bought it!).
After closing off one of the openings and adding lots of storage, it’s hard to match the exact angles of our before photos, but this shot of our fireplace is a good example of how far the room has come in the last 3.5 years.
It’s also a far cry from what it looked like right after we officially moved in. We swear there was a fireplace somewhere in the back!
Video tour of our finished bedroom
Before we dive into the list of the six main things we did to transform our bedroom, let’s take a quick tour of the finished room in the video. We don’t want to kid ourselves by calling this room 100% finished (every room tends to evolve over time), but now that we’ve added closets, built-in closets, a custom fireplace, floating shelves, etc – well, it just feels “done” as much as we think it will ever be. So here’s how far we’ve come:
Note: You can also watch this video on YouTube.
1. Adding a wall of built-in wardrobes
The biggest functional improvement in this room was by adding a wall of Ikea Pax wardrobes to create real (and abundant!) closet space. Starting from a a large wardrobe in our old house that there were absolutely no closets in this room was quite a patience. But thanks to the addition of these cabinets, we were able to create as much storage space like we had in our old house!
It wouldn’t be possible without closing one of the openings between the old living room and the kitchen, as well as one of the front doors you see on the right side of the photo below (which is the wall our bed is now against). It might seem odd to eliminate French doors, but this room has three more sets!
Six doors left, along with three windows! So luckily there’s no shortage of light or beautiful views here.
As a reminder, this is how the room looked when we bought it from this angle:
But back to the closets. We love Pax wardrobes because of how adaptable they are and how easy they are to fit into a room. We wrote a whole tutorial for how to make Ikea wardrobes look built-in.
We’ve also shared a tour of how we configured their interior, so you can see exactly how we organized them here. We even built in a room for our holiday decor. One of them has a whole Christmas tree in it! You see everything here.
These cabinets are probably the best decision we made in this room. None of us ever expected to have this many closets in this house, let alone closets that are so functional. Honestly, I’ve never felt more organized. Downsizing + thoughtful built-in memory for the win.
2. Making room for a large bed
Speaking of things we didn’t expect for this room: the biggest bed we’ve ever owned! Thanks to careful space planning and these simple DIY nightstandswe finally upgraded to a double bed after nearly two decades of sharing the queen. Not only is it a more spacious and comfortable way to sleep (especially with a dog who likes to sleep horizontally between us), but it actually helps the room feel bigger.
It sounds counterintuitive, but small spaces often look more spacious with fewer large items than a bunch of smaller ones, which can appear cluttered and “busier” to the eye. So making room for a larger piece of furniture can help make the space itself feel bigger!
Having a bigger bed seems to make him LIVE BIGGER too. We have more space to spread out and it’s a place where the kids can lie with us on lazy weekends too.
And just for fun, here’s a photo of this wall when we bought the house. We didn’t know right away that it would be the best place for the bed (so we moved the bed around for a while), but we love it so much now that we have it there! It was meant to happen.
3. Fixing a fireplace that doesn’t work
One architectural holdover from this room’s living room days is the fireplace. It was no longer functional, so we went out of our way to turn it into a beautiful feature to enjoy – just like our wall of glass doors.
There were several stages in this transformation, of which the primary parts are a stylish DIY cape we made for surround and beach spin on fireplace logs.
A more recent update is the addition of this large sculptural mirror that I’ve had my eye on for years (no longer for sale, but this one is similar). I knew the irregularly textured trim would play so nicely with our plaster sconces – and help bounce even more light around the room.
So all those slow and steady aesthetic improvements we’ve made to the fireplace over the last three years have created such a beautiful focal point to enjoy from bed.
4: Adding even more built-in memory
In addition to the storage closet, we made our bedroom even more valuable by installing a full wall of cabinets around the fireplace. Not only did it help make sense of some empty nooks on either side of the fireplace, but it also helped create more critical storage space for our previously storage-challenged house.
I mean, just look at all the hidden storage we gained on this wall compared to the previous photo below.
We have created this bonus storage space building in some Ikea Besta cabinets and top them with butcher block stalls. Not only do they look pretty, but they keep everything from board games and books to our laundry basket out of sight.
You can see the full guide to installing them, as well as a tour of how we organized them on uthis post.
5. Hanging smart window coverings
We mean “smart” in both senses of the word: smart as in “thoughtful” and also smart as in “voice operated.” Instead of re-hanging the blinds on the wall of the French doors, we opted for an almost wall-to-wall curtain with blackout curtains (they are ours ivory color). Not only do they look much nicer than the old blinds, but they also do an amazing job of keeping the room dark at night. We still sleep here!
On three windows of the room, we hung a low profile modern blinds to maximize your view during the day. But we splurged on smart blackout shades so we could control them with our Alexa. We did the whole thing smart blinds FAQ post which details the cost, installation and operation of these shades if you’re curious. We’ve had them for almost 3 years and still love them!
Together, this combination of blackout curtains and smart blinds made our otherwise bright room (which we love during the day!) a cozy and private sleeping space at night.
6. Designate a place for beautiful things
One thing this room is a little lacking in is wall space, as much of it is taken up by windows, doors, and closets. So I was excited to take over this odd corner by the door purely for decorative purposes. And it’s now one of my favorite corners of our entire house!
At the same time, we also extended the built-in wardrobes over this wall added three long floating shelves. Many of my favorite decorative items didn’t really feel like they had a place to shine – and as soon as these shelves went up and I filled them with plants, books, art, vases and crystals, my heart skipped a few beats.
A place to display beautiful things may sound a little superficial, but I truly believe that seeing the things you love in your home every day can be what really makes it feel like YOUR home. Especially in a nice arrangement that you can take in from multiple rooms (these shelves improved the view of our bedroom from our downstairs living room, as well as our view from the bedroom itself).
We love that the shelves help make our bedroom look distinctly sleepless from our sitting area (rather than looking at the bed or something more open from that door). And having a place to display personal favorites like some metal birds I made with my friends in the workshop or a picture of one of my kids is so nice. Note: If you’re looking for more tutorials to upgrade your room, this post has it 16 easy DIY shelf projects for you.
For good measure, I’ll leave you with another before and after – which is a similar view from our kitchen when we bought the house.
We have truly come a long way and are beyond grateful to have taken a chance on this old beach house that has been on the market for almost a year!
That concludes our list of six things we did to turn this once empty living room box into a peaceful and functional bedroom. It’s truly our favorite bedroom we’ve ever had!
As a reminder, this May will mark 4 years of living here – so this was by no means a quick bedroom transformation! But over time, some thoughtful, functional and just plain beautiful changes can add up to such a big difference.
*This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through the links on our website at no additional cost to you.