Saturday 20 September 2014

Playing around with colour

This was a fun and easy project for me...since I've got a large family, it's almost intuitive to design for children.

The project was to convert this custodial storage room into a playroom for this large building, filled with families with small children.



 
After re-locating the janitor's closet, we were ready to begin on the new playroom.

This room ended up being filled with several colourful custom pieces: a  fun sized and cutely cut green laminate activity table, library grade furnishings, and bright rubber tiles arranged to resemble the marshy water colours of this friendly forest theme.
         



The wallpaper was made from a hand-drawn vector file. The birch trees sketched in a Bill Watterson-reminiscent style, add a whimsical touch to the room. 


The large windows made this an ideal space for daytime playing.

One of the main features of this room was an alphabet wall installation. The key is to have a variety of textures and patterns, to make it diversely appeasing to the eye. My intern and I scoured numerous  stores, some online, and were able to find and create a playful array of letters that worked with the colour scheme; some of them were items loosely resembling the alphabet letters, some of them deco-podged, some painted onto canvases,  and some cleverly matched up to their phonetic sounds. i.e. The Y was wrapped in yarn, the S is made from a s-s-snake, and well... who do you see when you look into that letter fixed onto a mirror? U! 




We continued this fun and playful colour scheme to the bathroom, using wide tiles to make a vibrant feature wall around the toilet and vanity. Plus, the fixtures are toddler-sized, perfect for tiny hands and toilet training.


Now all the kids in this building have a modern, yet practical playroom, full of vibrancy and fun!