6 Ways We Upgraded The Bedroom, gathered in one list

Our bedroom used to be a living room, so it is taken some work to turn it into a comfortable, functional, and striking sleeping space (it is truly one of our go-to rooms!). So today we are outlining the 6 most impactful improvements we made to our bedroom, complete with some updated pictures.

Our Bedroom, Before

You can check out all of the before photos of our home here, but as you can see below, it was a mostly blank canvas. Well, except for the crumbling drywall, crooked blinds, and wide doorways to the adjacent kitchen – all of which we had to address. But we enjoyed the fireplace and the wall of french doors and fairly much immediately knew it would make for an remarkable bedroom (since the house was listed as having only one bedroom when we picked up it!).

After closing off one of the openings and adding plenty of storage, it is difficult 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 over the last 3.5 years.

It is also a far cry from how it looked right after we officially moved in. We swear there was a fireplace back there somewhere!

A Video Tour Of Our Wrapped up Bedroom

Before we dive into the list of the six main things we did to transform our bedroom, let us take a swift spin around the wrapped up room on video. We do not want to jinx ourselves by calling this room 100% done (every room tends to evolve over time), but now that we have brought in closets, built-in cabinetry, a custom mantel, floating shelves, etc – well, it simply feels as “wrapped up” as we think it ever will. So here is how far it has come:

Note: You can also watch this video on YouTube.

1. Adding A Wall Of Built-In Closets

The biggest functional improvement in this room was adding a wall of Ikea Pax wardrobes to create that proper (and plentiful!) closet space. Going from a big walk-in closet in our old house to absolutely no closet in this room was quite an exercise in patience. But thanks to the addition of these closets, we were able to create simply as much storage as we had in our old house!

It would not have been possible without closing off one of the openings between the old living room and kitchen, as well as one of the doorways outside that you see on the right of the photo below (which is the wall that our bed now sits against). It may seem strange to eliminate a french door, but this room still has three more sets of them!

Six doors remain, along with three windows! So there is thankfully no lack of light or striking views in here.

As a reminder, here is what the room looked like when we picked up it from this angle:

But back to the closets. We enjoy Pax wardrobes because of how customizable they are and how straightforward they are to incorporate into a room. We wrote a whole walkthrough for how to make Ikea closets look built-in.

We also shared a tour of how we configured the inside of them, so you can see exactly how we organized them here. We even incorporated room for our holiday decor. There is a whole Christmas tree in one of them! See it all here.

These closets are likely the single best decision we have made in this room. Neither of us ever expected to have this much closet space in this house, let alone closets that are so functional. Honestly, I have never felt more organized. Downsizing + thoughtful built-in storage for the win.

2. Making Room For A King-Size Bed

Speaking of things we never expected for this room: the biggest bed we have ever owned! Thanks to some careful space planning and these straightforward Hands-on nightstands, we at last upgraded to a king-size bed after nearly two decades of sharing a 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 in fact helps the room feel bigger.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but small spaces frequently feel more expansive with fewer larger items than a bunch of smaller ones, which can look more cluttered and “busier” to the eye. So making room for a larger piece of furniture can assist a space itself feel larger!

Having a bigger bed also feels like it LIVES LARGER too. We have more room to spread out and it is a place the kids can lounge with us on lazy weekends too.

And simply for lively, here is a photo of this wall back when we picked up the house. We did not immediately know it would be the best spot for a bed (so we moved the bed around for a while), but we enjoy it so much now that we have it there! Meant to be.

3. Fixing Up A Non-Working Fireplace

One architectural “holdover” from this room’s living room days is the fireplace. It was no longer functional, so we set our sights on making it into a striking feature we could enjoy gazing at – simply like our wall of glass doors.

There were a few stages to this transformation, the primary parts being a modern Hands-on mantle we built for the surround and a beachy spin on fireplace logs.

A more recent update has been the addition of this large sculptural mirror that I had my eye on for years (it is no longer sold but this one is similar). I knew the irregular textured border would play so beautifully with our plaster sconces -and it helps to bounce even more light around the room.

So all of those slow and steady aesthetic improvements that we made to the fireplace over the last three years have created such a pleasant focal point for us to enjoy from bed.

4: Adding Even More Built-In Storage

In addition to the closet storage, we made our bedroom even more hardworking by incorporating a whole wall of cabinet storage around the fireplace. Not only did it assist make sense of some empty nooks on either side of the fireplace, it also helped create more critical storage space for our formerly storage-challenged house.

I mean, simply look at all of the concealed storage space we earned on this wall as compared to the before photo below.

We created this bonus storage space by building in some Ikea Besta cabinets and topping them with butcher block counters. Not only do they look pleasant, but they keep everything from board games and books to our laundry basket out of sight.

You can see the whole walkthrough for building them in, as well as a tour of how we organized them in this 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-controlled.” Rather than rehanging blinds on the wall of french doors, we opted for a nearly wall-to-wall curtain rod with blackout curtains (ours are the ivory color). Not only do they look a lot nicer than the old blinds did, but they also do an incredible job at keeping the room dark at night. We do sleep in here, after all!

On the room’s three windows, we hung low-profile modern roller shades to maximize the view during the day. But we splurged for smart blackout shades so that we could control them with our Alexa. We did a whole smart blinds FAQ post that details the cost, installation, and operation of these shades if you are curious. We have had them nearly 3 years and still enjoy them!

Together, this combination of blackout curtains and smart blinds has made our otherwise bright room (which we enjoy during the day!) a cozy and private sleeping space at night.

6. Carving Out A Spot For Fairly Stuff

One thing this room is a little short on is wall space, since so much of it is occupied by windows, doors, and closets. So that is why I was excited to claim this weird corner by the door for purely decorative purposes. And it is now one of my go-to corners of our whole house!

At the same time that we extended the built-in cabinets across this wall, we also brought in three long floating shelves. A lot of my go-to decorative stuff hadn’t truly felt like it had a spot to shine – and the second these shelves went up and I filled them with plants, books, art, vases, and crystals my heart skipped several beats.

A spot to display fairly things may sound a little superficial, but I truly believe that seeing things that you enjoy in your home every day can be what truly makes it feel like YOUR home. Especially in a lovely arrangement that you can soak up from multiple rooms (these shelves improved the view into our bedroom from our downstairs living area as well as our view from within the bedroom itself).

We enjoy that the shelves assist our bedroom look decidedly un-bedroom-y from our sitting area (instead of looking at a bed or something more overt from that doorway). And having a spot to showcase personal go-tos like some metallic birds I made with friends in a workshop or a painting by one of my children is so pleasant. Sidenote: if you are seeking out more shelving walkthroughs to upgrade your room, this post has 16 straightforward Hands-on shelf projects for you.

For good measure, I will leave you with one last before & after – which is a similar view from our kitchen back when we picked up the house.

We truly have come a long way, and we are beyond grateful that we took a chance on this old beach house that was on the market for nearly a year!

With that, we will wrap up our list of six things we did to turn this former blank box of a living room into a serene and functional bedroom. It truly is our go-to bedroom we have ever had!

As a reminder, this May will mark 4 years of living here – so by no means was this a swift bedroom transformation! But over time, some thoughtful, functional, and simply plain striking changes can add up to such a big difference.

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