HGTV Star Emily Henderson's Kid-Room Design Tips

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We've had a girl crush on interior designer, HGTV Design Star winner, and generally cool chick Emily Henderson since we first caught an episode of her show Secrets From a Stylist and fell for both her whimsical, eclectic style and her all-around winning personality. We sat down with Emily to discuss kid-room design tips (hint: using grandma's hand-me-downs is A-OK), her own dream nursery, and her favorite children's decor shops, and gosh darn it if our crush didn't turn into a full-on love . . . design love, that is. Keep reading to see some of the amazing kiddie spaces Emily has designed for clients and learn how to create your own stylish kid's room!

On Pregnancy and Baby Boy Style

On Pregnancy and Baby Boy Style

When stylist, blogger, and HGTV star Emily Henderson was expecting her first child, a son, one bright note in her difficult pregnancy was shopping for her son's tiny wardrobe off the beaten path. "So many stores have clothes that make little boys look like mini frat boys," she says. "I've been buying a lot of vintage clothing. I'm going for Newsies meets Footloose. For the first few months, I'll probably just dress him in onesies with clip-on bow ties every day."

Design Tip: Keep the Wall Color Grown-Up

Design Tip: Keep the Wall Color Grown-Up

"Choose a color palette that is kid enough without being too 'baby,'" Emily says. "This room (designed for 5-year-old Graham) doesn't get a ton of light, so I chose a medium tone on the walls (Half Moon Crest by Benjamin Moore). It's something that isn’t too dark and won't frankly frighten him, but would be darker then just white because white in a windowless space looks dead. Sure, you can have bright saturated colors in the room, but by keeping the main wall color more sophisticated, you avoid having to repaint it in five years. A gray like this feels 'boy' without feeling 'baby boy.'"

Design Tip: Bring Color In Through Textiles

Design Tip: Bring Color In Through Textiles

"I try to design kids' rooms so they're timeless enough that the parents and kids aren't going to have to redo very much for five or six years," Emily says. "I try to stick to color palettes that even grown-ups would like, though I guess I did design this little girl's room in hot pink and aqua. But grown-ups can like hot pink and aqua, right?

"Textiles are where you can do stuff that's of the moment. You're more likely to change the bedding and rug in five years more than you are to change the furniture."

Design Tip: Mix Antique and Modern Pieces

Design Tip: Mix Antique and Modern Pieces

"Antique furniture looks cooler with things that are new and modern," Emily says. "In this room, the bed was her grandma's, but by mixing it with modern pieces, it doesn't look like a grandma's showroom.

"Also bring vintage in through art. It would be cool to find a beautiful vintage children's book and frame all the pages. That's a really easy and inexpensive way to engage a whole wall."

Design Tip: Mix 2 to 3 Patterns to Avoid Chaos

Design Tip: Mix 2 to 3 Patterns to Avoid Chaos

"As a massive fan of pattern, it can be hard for me to say this, but kids are already chaotic (no offense, parents)," Emily says. "By mixing a ton of patterns in their rooms, you are adding so much busyness and chaos even before they spread their toys and socks and kid-like mess around. So I would limit the patterns to three in a room."

Design Tip: Get Kooky With Toys and Accessories

Design Tip: Get Kooky With Toys and Accessories

"Yes, trucks and cars can be styled to be objects on a shelf. Do it! The shelf is timeless, the chair is great for all kids' spaces, but all the accessories bring in the child's personality," Emily says. "Show restraint with the furniture, but go nuts with the accessories by styling it all playful.

"The lucite box full of vintage toy planes is just that: a lucite box with vintage planes in it. I got them for $40 at an antique store and I wanted to put them under a glass dome, but you can't put glass domes on shelves in kids' rooms. They'll pull them off the shelf, break the glass into shards of glass, tear open their tiny nimble fingers playing with said glass and then, gasp, get blood all over the textiles as they are feeling their way towards a Band-Aid. I shudder to think of the damage to the fabric.

"Instead I bought this acrylic display box from The Container Store and threw them all in there. I told Graham he could certainly take them out and play with them, but he said, 'No, I want them just for design,' and tears of joy, love, and mostly pride came to my eyes."

Design Tip: Add Symmetry

Design Tip: Add Symmetry

"Nonsymmetrical rooms can be more exciting, indeed, but symmetry is a funny thing — it really calms things down and is very easy for your eye to understand," Emily says. "When your eye understands a space better, it feels calm and quiet. For a kid's room, symmetry is more sophisticated, but it also gives it a sense that it's more pulled together, immediately. So even when it's messy it feels less messy. Try matching nightstands or matching lamps. It's not always necessary, but it keeps things quieter."

Design Tip: Not Everything Has to Be Functional

Design Tip: Not Everything Has to Be Functional

"I got a lot of criticism for this mason jar art installation; people were like why didn't you use that as a functional thing?" Emily says. "The bottom half of the room is totally functional for a kid, but you would never put one toy in each of those cubbies. It would look super busy. The mason jars brought life and color into the space in a way that isn't tacky. They are a five-year solution until the parents can turn them into the wine holders they want them to be."

Design Tip: Make Sure Mom and Dad Love It, Too

Design Tip: Make Sure Mom and Dad Love It, Too

"While your kid might be dying for a sofa that is in the shape of a Teletubby or Jabba the Hutt, he will get over that quickly . . . and then guess what you are going to have? A sofa in the shape of a Teletubby or Jabba the Hutt," Emily says. "So when buying furniture, make sure that you like it, and that after he gets sick of it or grows all old and goes to college, then you can incorporate the furniture into other areas of the house.

"This playroom was in the middle of the open-concept living space. It feels happy and kid, but it's not like all of a sudden you're in a space that's obnoxious and messy. The rug and pouf and furniture are all pieces that the parents loved, and we just retrofitted them for their kid's room."

Design Tip: Inspire Your Kids to Keep It Clean

Design Tip: Inspire Your Kids to Keep It Clean

"If you let your kids get involved in the design of their rooms, they're more likely to really love the result, want to hang out in it, play in it all the time, and even keep it really clean," Emily says. "The parents I've designed for say their kids really do keep their new rooms clean because they love them!"

Design Tip: Keep It Safe

Design Tip: Keep It Safe

"The words 'kid-friendly,' 'childproof,' 'storage solutions,' and 'safe' are quite possibly the least sexy words to hear as a designer," Emily says. "It's hard, really hard, to make a space indestructible to a baby, full of things that won't destroy a baby, and still have it look beautiful, stylish, and grown up." But in this room, created for Joy Cho of Oh Joy!, mom to toddler Ruby, Emily managed to accomplish it.

Easy fixes included replacing a sharp-cornered coffee table with two large leather poufs, creating a chic DIY slipcover for a white couch using a piece of vintage batik fabric, and replacing breakable accessories with kid-friendly cardboard, wood, and plastic items.

Design Tip: Kid Design Doesn't Have to Be Super Expensive

Design Tip: Kid Design Doesn't Have to Be Super Expensive

Emily shares our obsession with The Land of Nod. "The Land of Nod has the cutest kid's stuff that's kind of inexpensive," Emily says. "I like Dwell Studio and Serena & Lily, but they're both a little more expensive. The Land of Nod is constantly changing up its inventory, so you don't feel like it's a big box store, even though it is a big nationwide company. Plus, the feel is kind of sophisticated dweeb, which I love."

In this little girl's room, she used The Land of Nod's Jenny Lind bookcase in azure and the pink Rags to Riches rug.

Design Tip: Start With a Feeling

Design Tip: Start With a Feeling

"The biggest adjective I'm going for with my nursery is happy," Emily says. "Not particularly sophisticated, not too baby or primary, but really, really happy. I'm very young at heart and like whimsical design, and I want to create my dream nursery."

In this nursery Emily designed for a client, she used Graham and Brown's frame wallpaper for an equally happy vibe.