Well, here we are – the first reveal of the river house is a 9-year-old’s closet, but when it’s this cute (and finished!) we figured why not. This year we have a wonderful partnership with Spoonflower which in case you don’t know has an incredible inventory of incredible inventory of wallpaper, fabric, and home decor. Every product is printed just for you in the design of your choice. There are thousands of designs to choose from, all created by independent artists around the world. They just launched a metallic backing to their papers that I’m pretty excited to show you today. It’s not the shiny, glitzy, tinsel metallic, that you might be imagining but actually a really elevated, matte metallic you’ll love. Come see.

This is my niece’s room and it’s currently super simple, with a lot of wood on the floors, doors, and ceilings. The whole color palette is still TBD but the white in here looks pretty great (It was once a soft pink but she hated it so much, now out of her pink phase. We decided that moving was stressful enough so we had it painted back white.)

My brother had this closet installed, which is really simple with just a few shelves. While you obviously don’t need wallpaper in your closet, it felt like a great opportunity to make this more fun and whimsical.

I ordered a ton of samples in the metallic finish and as you can see they are not garish at all – the paper itself has a reflection to it with the silver reading softer than the gold. It’s just a slight reflection versus something that is more mirrored. I was happily surprised at how much I truly loved them. As you can imagine, metallic wallpaper not made well could go very ummm…not great. NOT the case at all with these!

HOT TIP: It’s a good idea to start with about 3-5 samples/swatches before making any big purchases (I clearly really went for it in that department but you definitely can be more selective :)). It’s so important to feel and touch them as well as make sure you are happy with the pattern scale!

Wallpaper

I LOVE this pattern and we were very on the fence about which colorway to choose (it comes in multi-color and tones of blue). It’s by artist Mercedes Cortés, clearly in a Scandinavian vibe and we especially loved how the warm gold/caramel tones worked with the wood on the ceiling in the bedroom.

In case you are new to Spoonflower you can also order all their patterns as peel-and-stick wallpaper and even grasscloth (which we did for some other spaces – it’s so warm and textural). And if you want to go full Wes Anderson you can order full-length curtains or fabric by the yard to create a headboard to match (something we are attempting to do in the guest room). You can see a sneak peek of some of my favorites here – and as an added bonus, all of Spoonflower’s wallpaper is 30% off today.

Canvas Bins | Hangers with Clips | Non-Slip Hangers | Basket (similar)

We put everything back in and styled it all out (thanks Gretch!) and it turned out so sweet, cute, and totally custom.

I hope she smiles every time she opens her closet to get dressed.

Some fun things about Spoonflower – all their designs (they have thousands and thousands!) come as wallpaper or fabric, and within wallpaper, you have peel-and-stick, grasscloth, metallic, pre-pasted, or traditional pasted. For fabric, you can choose from a lot of different weights (linen, canvas, poplin, performance velvet). You can also buy curtains, bedding, or pillows made for you. Everything is custom printed, which sounds like it should have a long lead time but they’re pros – it came fast!

A fun mom hack is that a closet is a great place to let your kids choose something more wild and fun. While I think that this pattern and colorway are actually not that risky, my “clients” were nervous about doing the whole room in it mostly for timelessness. But in here, it’s this burst of fun and light every time she opens the closet, with very little risk (and the peel-and-stick option would make it even less risky).

A huge thanks to Spoonflower for partnering with us on this closet (and a lot more to come this year). And a big thank you to our expert wallpaper installers over at Second Mile! They did such an incredible job with this closet and the rest of the spaces at River House, from painting to wallpaper–they’re great. I linked up all my favorite metallics here for you to check out if you are into it. And remember – you can grab 30% off ALL of Spoonflower’s wallpaper today. Have any patterns caught your eye? I’d love to hear about it. xx

*Photos by Kaitlin Green