In the bedrooms they've created for their little girls, the interior-design team of Nicola Marc and Beth Gold have kept one decorating idea front and centre — these are spaces where older furnishings can take on a new life, where memorabilia is treasured and where favourite things are always on display.
The cradle is gone, and so is the changing table, but these rooms are easy to grow into, the designers say. Each room keeps sentimental touches from their infant days, but because some of the furniture could have been used in an adult space, the transition is smooth.
"As designers, we like to create an aesthetic and work with existing pieces," says Marc, who recently joined Gold in MarcGold Interiors.
In the sunny bedroom of Gold's three-year-old daughter Chloe, drapey white and blue linen curtains fit in with the white-framed prints made by Chloe's grandma. On her bed, a family piece from the 1950s, the white ruffled bedspread is covered with pillows and a quilt that was once Gold's.
"I'm using lots of pillows because Chloe uses it as a seating area," Gold says. "Not all bedrooms have room for seating."
The floral motif in the room is repeated in a vintage framed album cover, on the pillows, the area rug and the wallpaper that backs Chloe's pinboard on the wall just above her desk.
The pale colours in the room reflect the rest of the house, Gold says, where dashes of strong colour add playfulness — like the raspberry desk in Chloe's room. And the straw baskets filled with toys can easily be used for other functions in the rest of the house.
"We think about how we can make a fairly easy transition from one stage to another," Marc says. "It reflects our general approach to design."
"We want to give things new life by recovering and reframing," Gold says. "I'm soon going to reframe my husband's baby sampler for Chloe's room."
It's important, they say, to keep things fresh and to honour a child's history in their room — rather than reflecting the latest fad or cartoon character, their children's' room are designed to reflect the child.
The room, they believe, should fit into the overall design of the house, and they might even use an iconic piece, like a child-sized Barcelona chair — to add both a design-conscious and user-friendly element.
"We think you can make a child's bedroom fun and young without using child-themed paper or bedcovers," Gold says.
Marc's daughter, Clara, who just turned four, has a pegboard just above her bed, made from a recycled antique wooden shelf. Marc covered the backing with cork and trimmed it with bunting so that when Clara comes home from nursery school, she can put up her latest drawings.
She chose a fresh putty colour to paint the pegboard. "That colour looks so nice with blue," Marc says. "I like to do the unexpected with colour."
The fabric-covered single bed was found at a garage sale, its cane head and endboards broken. Now the pretty fabric used to cover them are also used in details on the pillow and on the fabric bolster, inside which Clara keeps toys from time to time.
A complimentary blue-striped linen with cream lining is used to make the canopy that drapes the bedhead.
"Kids love those whimsical touches," Marc says.
Because she wanted to keep the dark-stained hardwood floors yet achieve a cosy ambience, Marc added two champagne coloured sheepskin rugs on the floor, just below the painted bookcase full of Clara's favourite books and boxes to hold her dolls' clothes, books and toys.
On the spacious wall near the bookcase, Marc has created a grouping of her daughter's artwork and family photographs above a prettily framed series of letters, written to the newly born Clara by each of her grandparents.
Baskets of toys fill a corner of the room, while on butterfly hooks above Clara can hang favourite items. In the far corner, what was once her changing table has reverted to its original use as a white-painted chest of drawers.
Even the large cupboard in the room is put to play and storage use, covered with blue and white floral wallpaper, with organizational boxes and room to put away clothes and shoes.
"I love the huge scale of the flowers in this wallpaper," says Marc, who has labelled the boxes with various types of clothing.
"This gives Clara a chance to learn how to organize her things," she says.
donnanebenzahl@videotron.ca
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