Playroom featuring nature and animals
Time: 7 days

This room connects to a mud room which connects to the driveway, garage, and a backyard pool. As such, it is the first real room seen in the client's home. She wanted to create an environment, for her twins, that would ease the family from the garden and views outdoors to this playful intermediary room indoors. She and her family spend a great deal of time enjoying the countryside of Jarretsville, Maryland. Also, she had begun a taped-up gallery of her twins' artwork over many of the walls. The cherished various arworks collectively creating a visual paper avalanche as soon as one entered the house. She wanted a more contained orderly way to display their work and an environment that would inspire their creativity.

With this in mind we planned a huge magnetic blackboard to be painted on the one wall not visible from the entrance ways. It is tall enough to offer plentiful gallery space at the top for papers and ample space below for the twins' self-prescribed "his" and "her" sides for chalk drawings. The blackboard is framed by a plaid strip to match the cheery plaid drapery.

The drapery set the color themes: the walls were already a pale yellow to match, and the cherry-coral red and spring green also featured prominently in the mural. The client and I planned color washy green foliage: tree leaves, grasses, and vines to act as borders and a unifying color theme in the room. The red was used as points of punctuation around the room. The twins love animals and bugs so their mom requested bluebirds, a cicada to subtely note the year (2004), their cat and the pony the family had just adopted (pictured with her foal), as well as sunflowers. Most of the other animals were chosen at my discretion. The design is very animated. I tried to add masculine elements such as the client's cat ready to pounce on a mouse, along with feminine elements such as the birds and flowers. Even the client's husband, a builder by trade, in the end couldn't help but be charmed by the little horse farm complete with barn and silo!

You can see a similar painted chalkboard in my Train Station Mural.

Click on the pictures below to see details.