For Charlotte designer Brooke Adler, residential projects usually center around the kitchen and living areas where clients entertain. For this Villa Heights couple, though, the starting point was more personal.
The focus was on “His and Her” offices for parents who both work from home and on a nearby play space for their 4-year-old daughter.
“They wanted to be happy where they worked and create spaces that bring them joy,” Adler says. “They wanted that for each of them, and then one for their daughter.”
Adler’s first question when designing a playroom is whether to lean toward the masculine or feminine. Here, the clients suggested staying gender neutral since their family might keep growing.
“She was open to a lot of color, which makes it a lot easier,” Adler says.
Her inspiration started with wallpaper.
“When we built this budget, I wanted to put wallpaper in it because that’s what’s going to make this room feel special,” Adler says. “You could paint it a different color, but that’s not really going to do it justice.”
She started with an Anna Spiro print with oranges and greens.
“It looked like an abstract tree to me, so it felt more masculine,” Adler says. “But other things in the room balanced it out … It was giving us a little bit of a color start, but it wasn’t every color we were going to use in the room.”
She chose a blue performance velvet for the sofa, then layered it with green leafy pillows from Taylor King, accented with a yellow pompom, and a coordinating window treatment with yellow ticking stripe from Chelsea Textiles.
Flanking the sofa, wood side tables she describes as “little tree trunks” ground the space. Every fabric and furniture choice provides safety, flexibility and fun.
“When I do a playroom, people don't want you to fill all the spaces like you would in an adult space, because they need to be flexible,” Adler says. “Kids need to be able to play on the floor. So we thought movable ottomans would be good, that they could sit on, move around and people could put their feet on.”
She picked up greens from the wallpaper in a Stanton rug called Waveside-Watercrest. Its subtle stripe was easy to pair with patterns and also forgiving. The Royaltron Polypropylene and Polysilk materials make this indoor/outdoor rug easy to clean, but soft enough for little crawling knees.
In keeping with natural but fun tones, she painted the ceiling blue.
“It feels like the sky,” Adler says. “It’s the perfect ceiling color for a kid’s room because it feels happy.”
As quickly as Adler landed on the wallpaper, she took her time with what to adorn the wall behind the sofa. She wanted something that, like the wallpaper, would draw attention away from a mini-split HVAC, which they camouflaged with a wood covering.
“I wanted to keep my eyes and ears out for something special,” Adler says.
She found it on a trip to Charleston in a store called Auden & Avery, where she discovered a pair of wicker animal heads: a lion and an elephant.
To complete the space and bring visual interest to a nine-foot ceiling, she found a light fixture from Valley with a dozen arms.
She also included storage for books, art supplies and toys.
“We wanted things that would grow with them,” Adler says. “You want to come up with design pieces that accommodate things that are important now, but I’m also trying to think a couple of steps ahead.”